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■MOV SUim

MARCH

35 <

A New Cosmic Saj
by E.E.|5MITH-|

THE GALAXY PRi

IT’S

MAGIC!

If you like a really good fantasy story about magic,
be sure to pick up the March issue of FANTASTIC.
You’ll read about a befuddled hero, a beautiful
girl, a fearsome demon, and a potion that spells

Trouble With Magic!

Don’t miss this
story in the March
issue of

FANTASTIC,

on sale February 19, only 35c

AMAZING SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, Voi. 33, No. 3, March 1959, is published monthly by
Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, William B. Ziff, Chairman of the Board (1946-1953), at 434 South
Wabash Ave., Chicago 5, Illinois. Second-class postage poid at Chicago, III. Subscription rates:
U. S. and possessions and Canada $3.50 for 12 issues; Pan American Union Countries $4.00; all other
foreign countries $4.50.

AMUINB

SCIENCE FICTION STORIES

«£C. 0. S. PAT. Off.

Publisher

Michael Michaelson

Editorial Director

Norman M. Lobsenz

Editor

Cble Goldsmith

Art Editor

Sio Gbeiff

MARCH 19S9

Volume 33 Number 3

NOVEL

THE GALAXY PRIMES
(Port I)

By E. E, Smith 78

SHORT STORIES

AN ASIMOV SURPRISE! 7

MAROONED OFF VESTA

By Isaac Asimov 8

ANNIVERSARY

By Isaac Asimov 24

MEASURE FOR A LONER

By Jim Harmon 38

THE JUPITER WEAPON

By Charles L. Fontenay 50

QUESTION OF COMFORT

By Les Collins 61

JUBILATION, U. S. A.

By G. L. Vandenburg 129

FEATURES

EDITORIAL S

...OR SO YOU SAY 138

THE SPECTROSCOPE 141

"COMING NEXT MONTH" 23

Cover: ALBERT NUETZELL

Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, One Park
Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. William Ziff, Presi-
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TTTE ARE ALL particularly proud of this issue of Amazing, and

’ ’ I want to tell you why.

For the past few months we have all been working hard here not
only to improve the magazine — for that is a continuing project —
but to bring a sense of excitement to it, to get out of the rut.

And this is the issue that takes the first of what we hope will be
many big steps foi-ward. To begin with, we know you will all join
us in welcoming to these pages E. E. Smith, whose universe-sweep*-
ing novel, “The Galaxy Primes,” begins in this issue. It has been
too long since a Smith epic carried our imaginations off to the far
reaches of space. And this newest one does so with a vengeance —
with enough adventure, beautiful women, daring heroes, otherw'orld
ci’eatures, and superscience to satisfy even the greediest space-fan.

For the second shot from our double-barreled gun, we give you
Isaac Asimov’s surprise celebration of the 20th anniversary of his
first published story — published (you guessed it!) in Amazing. For
all the background on this unique venture in science-fiction editing,
I suggest you turn to Page 7 as soon as you finish this.

And, finally, we’d like to call your attention to a new cover artist,
and to solicit your opinions of his work.

We cannot guarantee you Smith and Asimov in every issue from
now on. But we can guarantee you that every issue will have some
element of the excitement that we here feel in putting them to-
gether for you. — N.L.

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AN ASIMOV SURPRISE!

T wenty years ago an eager stripling named Isaac Asimov en-
tered the office of Ray Palmer, then Managing Editor of Amaz-
ing, and made his first sale of a science-fiction story.

In this issue we at Amazing — with unabashed sentiment, pleasure
and pride — give you the 20th anniversary story that Isaac Asimov,
no longer a stripling but one of our most brilliant writers, created
to mark this personal milestone.

But this is more than a private celebration for Isaac Asimov
and for Amazing. It is a chance for every science-fiction fan to live
again the unforgettable early days of s-f; to see how far we have
come; and to take part vicariously in the development of one of
the top-notch writing skills in our field.

So, on the next page we present a reprint of Isaac Asimov’s first
story — “Marooned Off Vesta” — which appeared in the March, 1939,
issue of Amazing. It is headed by a new drawing by Virgil Finlay
which reproduces the original illustration. Immediately following
it is Asimov’s 1959 story, appropriately titled, “Anniversary.”

And, for a bonus, we also give you two Letters to the Editor — •
one written by stripling Asimov in 1939 ; the other by veteran Asi-
mov in 1959.

Brooklyn, N. Y.

March, 1939

Dear Editor,

By the time these words see print, I shall be an aged patriarch
rapidly approaching the venerable age of 19. Of these 19, the last
10 have been spent mainly in, on and about science fiction. As a
matter of fact my father introduced me to my first copy of Amazing
sometime in 1929 and the first story I read was “Barton’s Island.”
Since then I have been a steady reader, my favorite story of all
time being “Drums of Tapajos.”

I am of medium height, dark, and my mother thinks I’m hand-
some. The general consensus does not commit itself quite so far,
but I do not complain. I am now serving the last year of my sen-
tence at Columbia University and will graduate next June with
flying colors. My favorite pastime is reading; my favorite sciences,
mathematics and astronomy (though I am a major in chemistry at
Columbia and am taking a pre-med course). As far as I know I have

(Continued on page 143)

Precariously, he clung to the space ship’s hull. What
Q would happen when his ray pierced the tank?

By ISAAC ASIMOV

lUUSTRATOR FINIAY

CHAPTER I

Wreck Of The Silver Queen

W ILL you please stop walk-
ing up and down like
that,” said Warren Moore from
the couch, “it won’t do any of us
any good. Think of our bless-
ings ; we’re airtight, aren’t we ?”

Mark Brandon whirled and
ground his teeth at him. “I’m

There was air for only three
days, but water to last a
year. Warren Moore at-
tempted an impossible plan
—and won!

glad you feel happy about that,”
he spat out viciously. “Of course
you don’t know that our air-sup-
ply will last only three days.”
He resumed his interrupted
stride with a defiant air.

Moore yawned and stretched,
assumed a more comfortable

position, and replied, “Expend-
ing all that energy will only use
it up faster. Why don’t you take
a hint from Mike here. He’s tak-
ing it easy.”

“Mike” was Michael Shea,
late a member of the crew of the
Silver Queen. His short, squat
body was resting on the only
chair in the room and his feet
were on the only table. He look-
ed up as his name was mention-
ed, his mouth widening in a
twisted grin.

“You’ve got to expect things
like this to happen sometimes,”
he said. “Bucking the asteroids
is risky business. We should’ve
taken the hop. It takes longer,
but it’s the only safe way. But
no, the captain wanted to make
the schedule; he would go
through,” Mike spat disgustedly,
“and here we are.”

“What’s the ‘hop’?” asked
Brandon.

“Oh, I take it that friend
Mike means that we should have
avoided the asteroid belt by plot-
ting a course outside the plane
of the ecliptic,” answered
Moore. “That’s it, isn’t it,
Mike?”

Mike hesitated and then re-
plied cautiously, “Yeah — I guess
that’s it.”

Moore smiled blandly and con-
tinued, “Well, I wouldn’t blame
Captain Crane too much. The
repulsion screen must have fail-
ed five minutes before that
chunk of granite barged into us.
That’s not his fault, though of
course we ought to have steered

clear instead of relying on the
screen.” He shook his head med-
itatively, “The Silver Queen just
went to pieces. It’s really mirac-
ulously lucky that this part of
the ship remained intact, and
what’s more, air-tight.”

“You’ve got a funny idea of
luck, Warren,” said Brandon.
“Always have for as long as I’ve
known you. Here we are in a
tenth part of a spaceship, com-
prising only three whole rooms,
with air for three days, and no
prospect of being alive after
that. And you have the infernal
gall to prate about luck.”

“Compared to the others who
died instantly when the asteroid
struck, yes,” was Moore’s an-
swer.

“You think so, eh? Well, let
me tell you that instant death
isn’t so bad compared with what
we’re going to have to go
through. Suffocation is a damn-
ed unpleasant way of dying.”

“We may find a way out,”
Moore suggested hopefully.

“Why not face facts!” Bran-
don’s face was flushed and his
voice trembled. “We’re done, I
tell you! Through!”

Mike glanced from one to the
other doubtfully and then cough-
ed to attract their attention,
“Well, gents, seeing that we’re
all in the same fix, I guess there
is no use hogging things.” He
drew a small bottle out of his
pocket that was filled with a
greenish liquid. “Grade A Jabra
this is. I ain’t too proud to share
and share alike.”

Brandon exhibited the first

AMAZING STORIES

signs of pleasure for over a day.
“Marian Jabra water. Why
didn’t you say so before?”

But as he reached for it, a
firm hand clamped down upon
his wrist. He looked up into the
calm blue eyes of Warren
Moore.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Moore,
“there isn’t enough to keep us
drunk for three days. What do
you want to do? Go on a tear
now and then die cold sober?
Let’s save this for the last six
hours when the air gets stuffy
and breathing hurts — then we’ll
finish the bottle among us and
never knoyo when the end comes,
or care.”

Brandon’s hand fell away re-
luctantly, “Damn it, Warren,
you’d bleed ice if you vvere cut.
How can you think straight at a
time like this?” He motioned to
Mike and the bottle was once
more stowed away. Brandon
walked to the porthole and
gazed out.

Moore approached and placed
a kindly arm over the shoulders
of the younger man. “Why take
it so hard, man?” he asked, “you
can’t last at this rate. Inside of
twenty-four hours you’ll be a
madman if you keep this up.”

There was no answer. Bran-
don stared bitterly at the globe
that filled almost the entire port-
hole, so Moore continued,
“Watching Vesta won’t do you
any good, either.”

Mike Shea lumbered up to the
porthole, “We’d be safe if we
were only down there on Vesta.

There’s people there. How far
away are we?”

“Not more than three or four
hundred miles judging, from its
apparent size, answei’ed Moore.
“You must remember that it is
only two hundred miles in diam-
eter.”

“Three hundred miles from
salvation,” murmured Brandon,
“and we might as well be a mil-
lion. If there were only a way
to get ourselves out of the orbit
this rotten fragment adopted.
You know, manage to give our-
selves a push so as to start fall-
ing. There’d be no danger of
-erasbing if we did, because that
midget hasn’t got enough grav-
ity to crush a creampuff.”

“It has enough to keep us in
the orbit,” retorted Brandon.
“It must have picked us up
while we were lying unconscious
after the crash. Wish it had
come closer ; we might have been
able to land on it.”

“Funny place, Vesta,” ob-
served Mike Shea. “I was down
there two-three times. What a
dump ! It’s all covered with some
stuff like snow only it ain’t
snow. I forget what they call it.”

“Frozen carbon dioxide?”
prompted Moore.

“Yeah, dry ice, that carbon
stuff, that’s it. They say that’s
what makes Vesta so shiny.”

“Of course! That would give
it a high albedo.”

Mike cocked a suspicious eye
at Moore and decided to let it
pass. “It’s hard to see anything
down there on account of the
snow, but if you look close,” he

/AAROONED OFF VESTA

pointed, “you can see a sort of
gray smudge. I think that’s Ben-
nett’s dome. That’s where they
keep the observatory. And there
is Calorn’s dome up there. That’s
a fuel station, that is. There’s
plenty more, too, only I don’t see
them.”

He hesitated and then turned
to Moore, “Listen, boss, I’ve
been thinking. Wouldn’t they be
looking for us as soon as they
hear about the crash? And
wouldn’t we be easy to find from
Vesta seeing we’re so close?”

Moore shook his head, “No,
Mike, they won’t be looking for
us. No one’s going to find out
about the crash until the Silver
Queen fails to turn up on sched-
ule. You see, when the asteroid
hit, we didn’t have time to send
out an SOS.” He sighed. “And
they won’t find us down there at
Vesta, either. We’re so small
that even at our distance they
couldn’t see us unless they knew
what they were looking for, and
exactly where to look.

“Hmm,” Mike’s forehead was
corrugated in deep thought,
“then we got to get to Vesta be-
fore three days are up.”

“You’ve got the gist of the
matter, Mike. Now, if we only
knew how to go about it, eh?”

Brandon, suddenly exploded,
“Will you two stop this infernal
chitter-chatter and do some-
thing? For God’s sake, do some-
thing.”

Moore shrugged his shoulders
and without answer, returned to
the couch. He lounged at ease,
apparently carefree, but there

was the tiniest crease between
his eyes which bespoke concen-
tration.

There was no doubt about it;
they were in a bad spot. He re-
viewed the events of the preced-
ing day for perhaps the twen-
tieth time.

After the asteroid had struck,
tearing the ship apart, he’d gone
out like a light; for how long
he didn’t know, his own watch
being broken and no other time-
piece available. When he came
to, he found himself, along with
Mark Brandon, who shared his
room, and Mike Shea, a member
of the crew, sole occupants of
all that was left of the Silver
Queen.

This remnant was now ca-
reening in an orbit about Vesta.
At present, things were fairly
comfortable. There was a food
supply that would last a week.
Likewise there was a regional
gravitator under the room that
kept them at normal weight and
would continue to do so for an
indefinite time, certainly for
longer than the air would last.
The lighting system was less
satisfactory but had held on so
far.

There was no doubt, however,
where the joker in the pack lay.
Three days air! Not that there
weren’t other disheartening fea-
tures. There was no heating sys-
tem (though it would take a long
time for the ship to radiate
enough heat into the vacuum of
space to render them too uncom-
fortable). Far more important

AMAZING STORIES

was the fact that their part of
the ship had neither a means
of communication nor a propul-
sive mechanism. Moore sighed;
one fuel jet in working order
would fix everything, for one
blast in the right direction
would send them safely to Vesta.

The crease between his eyes
deepened. What was to be done?
They had but one spacesuit
among them, one heat-ray, and
one detonator. That was the sum
total of space appliances after a
thorough search of the accessi-
ble parts of the ship. A pretty
hopeless mess, that.

Moore shrugged his shoulders,
rose and drew himself a glass of
water. He swallowed it mechani-
cally, still deep in thought, when
an idea struck him. He glanced
curiously at the empty cup in
his hand.

“Say, Mike,” he said, “what
kind of water supply have we?
Funny that I never thought of
that before.”

Mike’s eyes opened to their
fullest extent in an expression
of ludicrous surprise. “Didn’t
you know, boss?”

“Know what?” asked Moore
impatiently.

“We’ve got all the water there
was,” he waved his hand in an
all-inclusive gesture. He paused,
but as Moore’s expression show-
ed nothing but total mystifica-
tion, he elaborated, “don’t you
see? We’ve got the main tank,
the place where all the water for
the whole ship was stored.” He
pointed to one of the walls.

“Do you mean to say that
there’s a tank full of water ad-
joining us?”

Mike nodded vigorously,
“Yep! Cubic vat a hundred feet
each way. And she’s three-quar-
ters full.”

Moore was astonished,
“750,000 cubic feet of water.”
Then suddenly, “Why hasn’t it
ran out through the broken
pipes?”

“It only has one main outlet,
which runs down the corridor
just outside this room. I was fix-
ing that main when the asteroid
hit and had to shut it off. After
I came to I opened the pipe lead-
ing to our faucet, but that’s the
only outlet open now.”

“Oh.” Moore had a curious
feeling way down deep inside.
An idea had half-formed in his
brain, but for the life of him he
could not drag it into the light
of day. He knew only that there
was something in what he had
just heard that had some impor-
tant meaning but he just could
not place his finger on it.

Brandon, meanwhile, had been
listening to Shea in silence, and
now he emitted a short, humor-
less laugh', “Fate seems to be
having its fill of fun with us, I
see. First, it puts us within
arm’s reach of a place of safety
and then sees, to it that we have
no way of getting there.

“Then she provides us with a
week’s food, three days air, and
a 1 / ear’s supply of water. A
year’s supply, do you hear me?
Enough water to drink and to
gargle and to wash and to take

MAROONED OFF VESTA

baths in and — and to do any-
thing else we want. Water —
damn the water!”

“Oh, take a less serious view,
Mark,” said Moore in an at-
tempt to break the younger
man’s melancholy. “Pretend
we’re a satellite of Vesta (which
we are). We have our own peri-
od of revolution and of rotation.
We have an equator and an axis.
Our ‘north pole’ is located some-
where toward the top of the
porthole, pointing toward Vesta
and our ‘south’ sticks out away
from Vesta through the water
tank somewhere. Well, as a sat-
ellite, we have an atmosphere,
and now, you see, we have a
newly discovered ocean.

“And seriously, we’re not so
badly olf. For the three days our
atmosphere will last, we can eat
double rations and drink our-
selves soggy. Hell, we have wa-
ter enough to throw away — ”

The idea which had been half-
formed before suddenly sprang
to maturity and was nailed. The
careless gesture with which he
had accompanied the last re-
mark was frozen in midair. His
mouth closed with a snap and
his head came up with a jerk.

But Brandon, immersed in his
own thoughts, noticed nothing
of Moore’s strange actions.
“Why don’t you complete the
analogy to a satellite,” he sneer-
ed, “or do you, as a Professional
Optimist, ignore any and ail dis-
agreeable facts? If I were you.
I’d continue this way.” Here he
imitated Moore’s voice, “The
satellite is at present habitable

and inhabited but due to the ap-
proaching depletion of its at-
mosphere in three days, is ex-
pected to become a dead world.”

“Well, why don-’t you answer?
Why do you persist in making
a joke out . of this ? Can’t you see
— what’s the matter?”

The last was a surprised ex-
clamation and certainly Moore’s
actions did merit surprise. He
had arisen suddenly and after
giving himself a smart rap on
the forehead, remained stiff and
silent, staring into the far dis-
tance with gradually narrowing
eyelids. Brandon and Mike Shea
watched him in speechless as-
tonishment.

Suddenly Moore burst out,
“Ha! I've got it. Why didn’t I
think of it before?” His excla-
mations degenerated into the
unintelligible.

Mike drew out the Jahra bot-
tle with a significant look, but
Moore waved it away impatient-
ly. Whereupon Brandon, without
any warning, lashed out with his
right, catching the surprised
Moore flush on the jaw and top-
pling him.

Moore groaned and rubbed his
chin. Somewhat indignant, he
asked, “What was the reason for
that?”

“Stand up and I’ll do it
again,” shouted Brandon, “I
can’t stand it any more. I’m sick
and tilted of being preached at,
and having to listen to your
Pollyanna talk. You’re the one
that’s going daffy.”

“Daffy, nothing! Just a little

AMAZING STORIES

overexcited, that's all. Listen,
for God’s sake. I think I know
a way — ”

Brandon glared at him bale-
fully, “Oh, you do, do you? Raise
our hopes with some silly scheme
and then find it doesn’t work. I
won’t take it, do you hear? I’ll
find a real use for the water;
drown you — and save some of
the air besides.”

Moore lost his temper, “Lis-
ten, Mark, you’re out of this;
I’m going through alone. I don’t
need your help and I don’t want
it. If you’re that sure of dying
and that afraid, why not have
the agony over. We’ve got one
heat-ray and one detonator, both
reliable weapons. Take your
choice - and kill yourself. Shea
and I won’t interfere.” Bran-
don’s lip curled in a last weak
gesture of defiance and then
suddenly he capitulated, com-
pletely and abjectly, “All right,
Warren, I’m with you. I — I
guess I didn’t quite know what
I was doing. I don’t feel well,
Warren. I — I — ”

“Aw, that’s all right, boy.”
Moore was genuinely sorry for
him. Take it easy. I know how
you feel. It’s got me, too. But
you mustn’t give in to it. Fight
it, or you’ll go stark, raving
mad. Now you just try and get
some sleep and leave everything
to me. 'Things will turn out
right yet.”

Brandon, pressing a hand to
an aching forehead, stumbled to
the couch and tumbled down. Si-
lent sobs shook his frame while

Moore and Shea remained in
embarrassed silence nearby.

CHAPTER 2

A Tou9h Job

A t last, Moore nudged
Mike. “Come on,” he whis-
pered, “let’s get busy. We’re
going places. Airlock 5 is at the
end of the corridor, isn’t it?
Shea nodded and Moore contin-
ued, “Is it airtight?”

“Well,” said Shea after some
thought, “the inner door is, of
course, but I don’t know any-
thing about the outer one. For
all I know it may be a sieve. You
see, when I tested the wall for
airtightness, I didn’t dare open
the inner door, because if there
was anything wrong with the
outer one — blooey!” The accom-
panying gesture was very ex-
pressive.

“Then it’s up to us to find out
about that outer door right now.
I’ve got to get outside some way
and we’ll just have to take
chances. Where’s the spacesuit?”

He grabbed the lone suit from
its place in the cupboard, threw
it over his shoulder and led the
way into the long corridor that
ran down the side of the room.
He passed closed doors behind
whose air-tight barriers were
what once had been passenger
quarters but which were now'
merely cavities, open to space.
At the end of the corridor was
the tight-fitting door of Air-
lock 5.

Moore stopped and surveyed

MAROONED OFF VESTA

it appraisingly, “Looks all
right,” he observed, “but of
course you can’t tell what’s out-
side. God, I hope it’ll work.” He
frowned, “Of course we could
use the entire corridor as an air-
lock, with the door to our room
as the inner door and this as the
outer door but that would mean
the loss of half our air-supply.
We can’t afford that — yet.”

He turned to Shea, “All right,
now. The indicator shows that
the lock was last used for en-
trance, so it should be full of
air. Open the door the tiniest
crack, and if there’s a hissing
noise, shut it quick.”

“Here goes,” and the lever
moved one notch. The mecha-
nism had been severely shaken
up during the shock of the crash
and its former noiseless work-
ings had given way to a harsh,
rasping sound; but it was still
in commission. A thin black line
appeared on the left hand side
of the lock, marking where the
door had slid a fraction of an
inch on the runners.

There was no hiss! Moore’s
look of anxiety faded somewhat.
He took a small pasteboard from
his pocket and held it against
the crack. If air were leaking
that card should have held there,
pushed by the escaping gas. It
fell to the floor.

Mike Shea stuck a forefinger
in his mouth and then put it
against the crack. “Thank the
Lord,” he breathed, “not the
sign of a draft.”

“Good, good. Open it wider.
Go ahead.”

Another notch and the crack
opened further. And still no
draft. Slowly, ever so slowly,
notch by notch, it creaked its
way wider and wider. The two
men held their breaths, afraid
that while not actually punc-
tured, the outer door might have
been so weakened as to give way
any moment. But it held 1 Moore
was jubilant as he wormed into
the spacesuit.

“Things are going fine so far,
Mike,” he said. “You sit down
right here and wait for me. I
don’t know how long I’ll take but
I’ll be back. Where’s the heat-
ray? Have you got it?”

Shea held out the ray and ask-
ed, “But what are you going to
do? I’d sort of like to know.”

Moore paused as he was about
to buckle on the helmet. “Did
you hear me say inside that we
had water enough to throw
away? Well, I’ve been thinking
it over and that’s not such a bad
idea. I’m going to throw it
away.” With no other explana-
tion, he stepped into the lock,
leaving behind him a very puz-
zled Mike Shea.

It was with a pounding heart
that Moore waited for the outer
door to open. His plan was an
extraordinarily simple one — but
it might not be easy to carry
out.

There was a sound of creaking
gears and scraping ratchets. Air
sighed away to nothingness. The
door before him slid open a few
inches and stuck. Mooi'e’s heart
sank as for a moment he thought

A/AAZING STORIES

it would not open at all, but
after a few preliminary jerks
and rattles the barrier slid the
rest of the way.

He clicked on the magnetic
grapple and, very cautiously,
put a foot out into space. Clum-
sily, he groped his way out to
the side of the ship. He had
never been outside a ship in
open space before and a vast
dread ovei'took him as he clung
there, fly-like, to his precarious
perch. For a moment dizziness
overcame him.

He closed his eyes and for five
minutes hung there, clutching
the smooth sides of what had
once been the Silver Queen. The
magnetic grapple held him firm
and when he opened his eyes
once more he found his self-con-
fidence in a measure returned.

He gazed about him. For the
first time since the crash he saw
the stars, instead of the vision
of bloated Vesta which their
porthole afforded. Eagerly, he
searched the skies for the little
green speck that was Earth. It
had often amused him that
Earth should always be the first
object sought for space-travelers
when star-gazing but the humor
of the situation did not strike
him now. However, his search
was in vain. From where he lay-
Earth was invisible. It, as well
as the Sun, must be hidden be-
hind Vesta.

Still, there was much else that
he could not help but note. Jupi-
ter was off to the left, a brilliant
globe the size of a small pea to
the naked eye. Moore observed

two of its attendant satellites.
Saturn was visible, too, as a
brilliant star of some negative
magnitude, rivaling Venus as
seen from Earth.

Moore had expected that a
goodly number of asteroids
would be visible, marooned as
they were in the asteroid belt,
but space seemed surprisingly
empty. Once he thought he could
see a hurtling body pass within
a few miles but so fast had the
impression come and gone that
he could not swear that it was
not fancy.

And then, of course, there was
Vesta. Almost directly below
him it loomed like a balloon fill-
ing a quarter of the sky. It float-
ed steadily, snowy white, and
Moore gazed at it with earnest
longing. A good hard kick
against the side of the ship, he
thought, might start him falling
toward Vesta. He might land
safely and get help for the oth-
ers. But the chance was too
great that he would merely take
on a new orbit about Vesta. No,
it would have to be better than
that.

This reminded him that he
had no time to lose. He scanned
the side of the ship, looking for
the water tank but all he could
see was a jungle of jutting
walls, jagged, crumbling, and
pointed. He hesitated. Evident-
ly, the only thing to do was to
make for the lighted porthole to
their room and proceed to the
tank from there.

Carefully he dragged himself

MAROONED OFF VESTA

along the wall of the ship. Not
five yards from the lock, the
smoothness stopped abruptly.
There was a yawning cavity
which Moore recognized as hav-
ing once been the room adjoin-
ing the corridor at the far end.
He shuddered. Suppose he were
to come across a bloated dead
body in one of those rooms. He
had known most of the passen-
gers, many of them personally.
But he overcame his squeamish-
ness and forced himself to con-
tinue his precarious journey to-
ward its goal.

And here he encountered his
first practical difficulty. The
room itself was made of non-
ferrous material in many parts.
The magnetic grapple was in-
tended for use only on outer
hulls and was useless through-
out much of the ship’s interior.
Moore had forgotten this when
suddenly he found himself float-
ing down an incline, his grapple
out of use. He gasped and
clutched at a nearby projection.
Slowly, he pulled himself back to
safety.

He lay for a moment, almost
breathless. Theoretically, he
should be weightless out here in
space (Vesta’s influence being
negligible), but the regional
gravitator under his room was
working. Without the balance of
the other gravitators, it tended
to place him under variable and
sudden-shifting stresses as he
kept changing his jwsition. For
his magnetic grapple to let go
suddenly might mean being

jerked away from the ship alto-
gether. And then what?

Evidently, this was going to
be even more difficult than he
had thought.

After that, he inched forw'ard
in a crawl, testing, each spot to
see if the grapple would hold.
Sometimes he had to make long,
circuitous journeys to gain a
few feet’s headway and at other
times he was forced to scramble
and slip across small patches of
non-ferrous material. And al-
ways there was that tiring pull
of the gravitator, continually
changing directions as he pro-
gressed, setting horizontal floors
and vertical walls at queer and
almost haphazard angles.

Carefully, he investigated all
objects that he came across. But
it was a barren search. Loose
articles, chairs, tables had been
jerked away at the first shock
probably and now were inde-
pendent bodies of the solar sys-
tem. He did manage, however,
to pick up a small field-glass and
fountain pen. These he placed
in his pocket. They were value-
less under present conditions,
but somehow they seemed to
make more real this macabre
trip across the sides of a dead
ship.

For fifteen minutes, twenty,
half an hour, he labored slowly
toward where he thought the
porthole should be. Sweat pour-
ed down into his eyes and ren-
dered his hair a matted mass.
His muscles were beginning to
ache under the unaccustomed
strain. His mind, already strain-

AMAZING STORIES

ed by the ordeal of the previous
day, was beginning to waver, to
play him tricks.

The. crawl began to seem eter-
nal, something that had always
existed and would exist forever.
The object of the journey, that
for which he was striving seem-
ed unimportant; he only knew
that it was necessary to move.
The time, one hour back, when
he had been with Brandon and
Shea, seemed hazy and lost in
the far past. That more normal
time, two days age, wholly for-
gotten.

Only the jagged walls before
him; only the vital necessity of
getting at some uncertain desti-
nation existed in his spinning
brain. Grasping, straining, pull-
ing. Feeling for the iron alloy.
Up and into gaping holes that
were rooms and then out again.
Feel and pull ; — feel and pull.
And — a light.

Moore stopped ; had he not
been glued to the wall he would
have fallen. Somehow that light
seemed to clear things. It was
the porthole ; not the many dark,
staring ones he had passed, but
alive and alight. Behind it was
Brandon. A deep breath and he
felt better, his mind cleared.

And now his way lay plain be-
fore him. Toward that spark of
life he crept. Nearer, and near-
er, and nearer until he could
touch it. He was there!

His eyes drank in the familiar
room. God knows that it hadn’t
any happy associations in his
mind, but it was something real,

something almost natural. Bran-
don slept on the couch. His face
wa.s worn and lined but a smile
passed over it now and then.

Moore raised his fast to knock.
He felt the urgent desire to talk
with someone, if only by sign
language; yet at the last instant,
he refrained. Perhaps the kid
was dreaming of home. He was
young and sensitive and had
suffered much. Let him sleep!
Time enough to wake him when
— and if — his idea had been car-
ried through.

He located the wall within the
room behind which lay the wa-
ter tank and then tried to spot
it from the outside. Now it was
not difficult; its rear wall stood
out prominently. Moore marvel-
ed, for it seemed a very miracle
that it had escaped puncture.
Perhaps the Fates had not been
so ironic after all.

Passage to it was easy though
it was on the other side of the
fragment. What was once a cor-
ridor led almost directly to it.
Once when the Silver Queen had
been whole, that corridor had
been level and horizontal, but
now, under the unbalanced pull
of the regional gravitator, it
seemed more of a steep incline
than anything else. And yet it
made the path simple. Of uni-
form beryl-steel, Moore found no
trouble holding on as he wormed
up the twenty-odd feet to the
water supply.

And now the crisis — the last
stage — had been reached. He
felt that he ought to rest first
but his excitement grew rapidly

MAROONED OFF VESTA

in intensity; it was either now
or bust. He pulled himself out
to the bottom-center of the tank.
There, resting on the small ledge
formed by the floor of the cor-
ridor that had once extended on
that side of the tank, he began
operations.

“It’s a pity that the main pipe
is pointing in the wrong direc-
tion,” he muttered. “It would
have saved me a lot of trouble
had it been right. As it is — ”
He sighed and bent to his work.
The heat-ray was adjusted to
maximum concentration and the
invisible emanations focused at
a spot perhaps a foot above the
floor of the tank.

Gradually the effect of the ex-
citatory beam upon the mole-
cules of the wall became notice-
able. A spot the size of a dime
began shining faintly at the
point of focus of the ray-gun.
It wavered uncertainly, now
dimming, now brightening as
Moore strove to steady his tired
arm. He propped it on the ledge
and achieved better results as
the tiny circle of radiation
brightened.

Slowly the color ascended the
spectrum. The dark, angry red
that had first appeared lightened
to a cherry color. As the heat
continued pouring in, the
brightness seemed to ripple out
in widening areas, like a target
made of successively deepening
tints of red. The wall for a dis-
tance of some feet from the
focal point was becoming un-
comfortably hot even though it

did not glow and Moore found
it necessary to refrain from
touching it with the metal of his
suit.

Moore cursed steadily, for the
ledge itself was also growing
hot. It seemed that only impre-
cations could soothe him. And as
the melting wall began to radi-
ate heat in its own right, the
chief object of his maledictions
were the space-suit manufactur-
ers. Why didn’t they build a suit
that could keep heat out as well
as keep it ini

But what Brandon called Pro-
fessional Optimism crept up.
With the salt tang of perspira-
tion in his mouth, he kept con-
soling himself, “It could be
worse, I suppose. At least, the
two inches of wall here don’t
present too much of a barrier.
Suppose the tank had been built
flush against the outer hull.
W'hew! Imagine trying to melt
through a foot of this.” He grit-
ted his teeth and kept on.

The spot of brightness was
now flickering into the orange-
yellow and Moore knew that the
melting point of the beryl-steel
alloy would soon be reached. He
found himself forced to watch
the spot only at widely-spaced
intervals and then only for fleet-
ing moments.

Evidently it would have to be
done quickly, if it were to be
done at all. The heat-ray had not
been fully loaded in the first
place, and, pouring out energy
at maximum as it had been do-
ing for almost ten minutes now,
must be approaching exhaustion.

AMAZING STORIES

Yet the wall was just barely
passing the plastic stage. In a
fever of impatience, Moore jam-
med the muzzle of the gun di-
rectly at the center of the spot,
drawing it back speedily.

A deep depression formed in
the soft metel, but a puncture
had not been formed. However,
Moore was satisfied. He was al-
most there, now. Had there been
air between himself and the
wall, he would undoubtedly have
heard the gurgling and the hiss-
ing of the steaming water with-
in. The pressure was building
up. How long would the weak-
ened wall endure?

Then, so suddenly that Moore
did not realize it for a few mo-
ments, he was through. A tiny
fissure formed at the bottom of
that little pit made by the ray-
gun and in less time than it
takes to imagine, the churning
water within had its way.

The soft, liquid metal at that
spot puffed out, sticking out
raggedly around a pea-sized
hole. And from that hole there
came a hissing and a roaring.
A cloud of steam emerged and
enveloped Moore.

Through the mist he could see
the steam condense almost im-
mediately to ice droplets and
saw these icy pellets shrink rap-
idly into nothingness.

For fifteen minutes, he watch-
ed the steam shoot out.

Then he became aware of a
gentle pressure pushing him
away from the ship. A savage
joy welled up within him as he
realized that this was the effect

of acceleration on the ship's
part. His own inertia was hold-
ing him back.

That meant his work had been
finished — and successfully. That
stream of water was substitut-
ing for the rocket blast.

He started back.

If the horrors and dangers of
the journey to the tank had been
great, that back was greater. He
was infinitely more tired, his
aching eyes were all but blind,
and added to the crazy pull of
the Gravitator was the force in-
duced by the varying accelera-
tion of the ship. But whatever
his labors to return, they did not
bother him. In later time, he
never even remembered the
heartbreaking trip.

How he managed to negotiate
the distance in safety he did not
know. Most of the time he was
lost in a haze of happiness,
scarcely realizing the actualities
of the situation. His mind was
filled with one thought only — to
get back quickly, to tell the
happy news of their escape.

Suddenly he found himself
before the airlock. He hardly
grasped the fact that it was the
airlock ; he almost did not under-
stand why he pressed the signal
button. Some instinct told him
it was the thing to do.

Mike Shea was waiting. There
was a creak and a rumble and
the outer door started opening,
caught and stopped at the same
place as before but once again
it managed to slide the rest of
the way. It closed again behind

MAROONED OFF VESTA

him. Then the inner door opened
and Moore stumbled into Shea’s
arms.

As in a dream he felt himself
half pulled, half carried down
the corridor to the room. His
suit was ripped off and a hot,
burning liquid stung his throat.
Moore gagged, swallowed and
felt better. Shea pocketed the
Jabra bottle once more.

The blurred, shifting images
of Brandon and Shea before him
steadied and became solid.
Moore wiped the perspiration
from his face with a trembling
hand and essayed a weak smile.

“Wait,” protested Brandon,
“don’t say anything. You look
half dead. Rest, will you!”

But Moore shook his head. In
a hoarse, cracked voice he nar-
rated as well as he could the
events of the past two hours.
The tale was incoherent, scarce-
ly intelligible but marvelously
impressive. The two listeners
scarcely breathed during the
recital.

“You mean,” stammered
Brandon, “that the water spout
is pushing us toward Vesta ; like
a rocket exhaust.”

“Exactly — same thing as —
rocket exhaust,” panted Moore,
“action and reaction. Is located
— on side opposite Vesta — hence
pushing us toward Vesta.

Shea was dancing before the
porthole. “He’s right, Brandon,
me boy. You can make out Ben-
nett’s dome as clear as day. We
are getting there, we’re getting
there.”

“We’re approaching in spiral
path on account of original or-
bit,” Moore felt himself recover-
ing. “We’ll land in five or six
hours probably. The water will
last for quite a long while and
the pressure is still great, since
the water issues as steam.”

“Steam — at the low tempera-
ture of space?” Brandon was
surprised.

“Steam — at the low pressure
of space!” corrected Moore.
“The boiling point of water falls
with the pressure. It is very
low indeed in a vacuum. Even
ice has a vapor pressure suffi-
cient to sublime.”

He smiled. “As a matter of
fact, it freezes and boils at the
same time. I watched it.” A
short pause, then “Well, how do
you feel now, Brandon? Much
better, eh?”

Brandon reddened and his
face fell. He groped vainly for
words for a few moments. Fi-
nally he said in a half-whisper,
“You know, I must have acted
like a damn fool and a coward
at first. I — I guess I don’t de-
serve all this after going to
pieces and letting the burden of
our escape rest on your shoul-
ders.

“I wish you’d beat me up, or
something, for punching you be-
fore. It’d make me feel better.
I mean it.” And he really did
seem to mean it.

Moore gave him an affection-
ate push. “Forget it, you young
jackass. You’ll never know how
near I came to breaking down
myself.” He raised his voice in

AMAZING STORIES

order to drown out any further
apologies on Brandon’s part,
“Hey, Mike, stop staring out of
that porthole and bring over
that Jabra bottle.”

Mike obeyed with alacrity,
bringing with him three shav-
ing mugs to be used as make-

shift cups. Moore filled each pre-
cisely to the brim. He was going
to be drunk with a vengeance.

“Gentlemen,” he said solemn-
ly, “a toast.” The three raised
the mugs in unison, “Gentlemen,
I give you the year’s supply of
good old H2O we used to have.

THE END

COMING NEXT MONTH

Along with the second installment of E. E. Smith's The Galaxy
Primes, the April AMAZING brings you top stories by Charles

Fontenay, Cordwainer
Smith, and a brilliant new
writer, Keith Laumer.

Fontenay spins a yarn of
sheer adventure on Venus in
Wind; Smith tells the almost
mystical story of a ship so
big it couldn't be believed
— Golden the Ship Was —
Ohl Oh! Oh!; and Laumer's
gripping short novel. Grey-
lorn, is one of the tautest,
most suspenseful, most grip-
ping stories of action in
space we’ve read in a long
time.

The jam-packed April
AAAAZING will bring you at
least three other major stories, plus all our regular departments.

On sale at your newsstand March TO. 35t.

Tell your dealer to reserve a copy for you now.

ANNIVERSARY

By ISAAC ASIMOV

Twenty years later they were
still marooned — this time
in oblivion!

T he annual ritual was all set.

It was the turn of Moore’s
house this year, of course, and
Mrs. Moore and the children had
resignedly gone to her mother’s
for the evening.

Warren Moore surveyed the
room with a faint smile. Only
Mark Brandon’s enthusiasm
kept it going at the first, but he
himself had come to like this
mild remembrance. It came with
age, he supposed; twenty addi-
tional years of it. He had grown
paunchy, thin-haired, soft-jowl-
ed, and — worst of all — senti-
mental.

So all the windows were polar-
ized into complete darkness and
the drapes were drawn. Only
occasional stipples of wall were
illuminated, thus celebrating the
poor lighting and the terrible
isolation of that day of wreck-
age long ago.

There were space-ship rations
in sticks and tubes on the table
and, of course, in the center an
unopened bottle of sparkling
green Jabra water, the potent
brew that only the chemical ac-
tivity of Martian fungi could
supply.

Moore looked at his watch.
Brandon would be here soon ; he
was never late for this occasion.
The only thing that disturbed
him was the memory of Bran-
don’s voice on the tube; “War-
ren, I have a surprise for you
this time. Wait and see. Wait
and see.”

Brandon, it always seemed to
Moore, aged little. The younger
man had kept his slimness, and
the intensity with which he
greeted all in life, to the verge
of his fortieth birthday. He re-
tained the ability to be in high
excitement over the good and in

deep despair over the bad. His
hair was going gray, but except
for that, when Brandon walked
up and down, talking rapidly at
the top of his voice about any-
thing at all, Moore didn’t even
have to close his eyes to see the
panicked youngster on the wreck
of the Silver Queen.

The door-signal sounded and
Moore kicked the release with-
out turning round. “Come,
Mark.”

It was a strange voice that
answered, though; softly, tenta-
tively, "Mr. Moore?”

Moore turned quickly. Bran-
don was there, to be sure, but
only in the background, grin-
ning with excitement. Someone
else was standing before him;
short, squat, quite bald, nut-
brown and with the feel of space
about him.

Moore said wonderingly,
“Mike Shea — Mike Shea, by all
Space.”

They pounded hands together,
laughing.

Brandon said, “He got in
touch with me through the office.
He remembered I was with
Atomic Products — ”

“It’s been years,” said Moore.
“Let’s see, you were on Earth
twelve years ago — ”

“He’s never been here on an
anniversary,” said Brandon.
“How about that? He’s retiring
now. Getting out of space to a
place he’s buying in Arizona. He
came to say, hello, before he
left; stopped off at the city just
for that, and I was sure he came

for the anniversary. ‘What an-
niversary?’ says the old jerk.”

Shea nodded, grinning, “He
said you made a kind of celebra-
tion out of it every year.”

“You bet,” said Brandon, en-
thusiastically, “and this will be
the first one with all three of us
here, the first real anniversary.
It’s twenty years, Mike; twenty
years since Warren scrambled
over what was left of the wreck
and brought us dowm to Vesta.”

Shea looked about. “Space-
ration, eh ? That’s old-home-
week to me. And Jabra. Oh,
sure, I remember . . . Twenty
years. I never give it a thought
and now, all of a sudden, it’s
yesterday. Remember when we
got back to Earth finally?”

“Do I!” said Brandon. “The
parades. The speeches. Warren
was the only real hero of the
occasion and we kept saying so,
and they kept paying no atten-
tion. Remember?”

“Oh, well,” said Moore. “We
were the first three men ever to
survive a spaceship crash. We
were unusual and anything un-
usual is worth a celebration.
These things are irrational.”

“Hey,” said Shea, “any of you
remember the songs they wrote.
That marching one? ‘You can
sing of routes through Space
and the weary maddened pace
of the—’ ”

Brandon joined in with his
clear tenor and even Moore add-
ed his voice to the chorus so that
the last line was loud enough to
shake the drapes. “On the wreck
of the Silver Que-e-en,” they

ANNIVERSARY

roared out and ended laughing
wildly.

Brandon said, “Let’s open the
Jabra for the first little sip. This
one bottle has to last all of us
all night.”

Moore said, “Mark insists on
complete authenticity. I’m sur-
prised he doesn’t expect me to
climb out the window and hu-
man-fly my way around the
building.”

“Well, now, that’s an idea,”
said Brandon.

“Remember the last toast we
made?” Shea held his empty
glass before him and intoned.
‘Gentlemen, I give you the year’s
supply of good old 11,0 we used
to have’ Three drunken bums
when we landed. — Well, we
were kids. I was thirty and I
thought I was old. And now,”
his voice was suddenly wistful,
“they’ve retired me.”

“Drink!” said Brandon. “To-
day you’re thirty again, and we
remember the day on the Silver
Queen even if no one else does.
Dirty, fickle public.”

Moore laughed. “What do you
expect? A national holiday every
year with space-ration and
Jabra the ritual food and drink.”

“Listen, we’re still the only
men ever to survive a space-
ship crash and now look at us.
We’re in oblivion.”

“It’s pretty good oblivion. We
had a good time to begin with
and the publicity gave us a
healthy boost up the ladder. We
are doing well, Mark. And so
would Mike Shea be if he hadn’t
wanted to return to space.”

Shea grinned and shrugged
his shoulder. “That’s where I
like to be. I’m not sorry, either.
What with the insurance com-
pensation I got, I have a nice
piece of cash now to retire on.”

Brandon said reminiscently,
“The Wreck set back Trans-space
Insurance a real packet. Just the
same, there’s still something
missing. You say ‘Silver Queen’
to anyone these days, and he can
only think of Quentin, if he can
think of anyone.”

“Who?” said Shea.

“Quentin. Dr. Horace Quen-
tin. He was one of the non-sur-
vivors on the ship. You say to
anyone. What about the three
men who survived? and they’ll
just stare at you. ‘Huh,’ they’ll
say.”

Moore said, calmly, “Come,
Mark, face it. Dr. Quentin was
one of the world’s great scien-
tists and we three are just three
of the world’s nothings.”

“We survived. We’re still the
only men on record to survive.”

“So? Look, John Hester was
on the ship, and he was an im-
portant scientist, too ; not in
Quentin’s league, but important.
As a matter of fact, I was next
to him at the last dinner before
the rock hit us. Well, just be-
cause Quentin died in the same
wreck, Hester’s death was
drowned out. No one ever re-
members Hester died on the
Silver Queen. They only remem-
ber Quentin. We may be forgot-
ten, too, but at least we’re alive.”

“I tell you what,” said Bran-

AMAZING STORIES

don, after a period of silence
during which Moore’s rationale
had obviously failed to take.
“We’re marooned again. Twenty
years ago today, we were ma-
rooned off Vesta. Today, we’re
marooned in oblivion. Now here
are the three of us back together
again at last, and what happen-
ed before can happen again.
Twenty years ago, Warren pull-
ed us down to Vesta. Now let’s
solve this new problem.”

“Wipe out the oblivion, you
mean?” said Moore. “Make our-
selves famous?”

“Sure. Why not? Do you know
of any better way of celebrating
a twentieth anniversary?”

“No, but I’d be interested to
know where you expect to start.
I don’t think people remember
the Silver Queen at all, except
for Quentin, so you’ll have to
think of some way of bringing
the wreck back to mind. That’s
just to begin with.”

Shea stirred uneasily and a
thoughtful expression crossed
his blunt countenance. “Some
people remember the Silver
Queen. The insurance company
does, and you know that’s a
funny thing, now that you bring
up the matter. I was on Vesta
about ten-eleven years ago, and
I asked if the piece of the wreck
we brought down was still there
and they said sure, who would
cart it away? So I thought I’d
take a look at it and shot over
by reaction motor strapped to
my back. With Vestan gravity,
you know, a reaction motor is all

you need. — Anyway, I didn’t
get to see it except from a dis-
tance. It was circled off by
force-field.”

Brandon’s eyebrows went sky-
high. “Our Silver Queen? for
what reason?”

“I went back and asked how
come they didn’t tell me and
they said they didn’t know I was
going there. They said it be-
longed to the insurance com-
pany.”

Moore nodded, “Surely. They
took over when they paid off. I
signed a release, giving up my
salvage rights when I accepted
the compensation check. You did
too. I’m sure.”

Brandon said, “But why the
force-field ? Why all the pri-
vacy?”

“I don’t know.”

“The wreck isn’t worth any-
thing even as scrap metal. It
would cost too much to transport
it.”

Shea said, “That’s right
Funny thing, though ; they were
bringing pieces back from space.
There was a pile of it there. I
could see it and it looked like
just junk, twisted pieces of
frame, you know. I asked about
it and they said ships were al-
ways landing and unloading
more scrap, and the insurance
company had a standard price
for any piece of the Silver Queen
brought back, so ships in the
neighborhood of Vesta were al-
ways looking. Then, on my last
voyage in, I went to see the
Silver Queen again and that pile
was a lot bigger.

ANNIVERSARY

“You mean they’re still look-
ing?" Brandon’s eyes glittered.

“I don’t know. Maybe they’ve
stopped, but the pile was bigger
than it was ten-eleven years ago
so they were still looking then."

Brandon leaned back in his
chair and crossed his legs.
"Well, now, that’s very queer.
A hard-headed insurance com-
pany is spending all kinds of
money, sweeping space near
Vesta trying to find pieces of a
twenty-year-old wreck.”

“Maybe they’re trying to
prove sabotage,” said Moore.

“After twenty years? They
won’t get their money back even
if they do. It’s a dead issue.”

“They may have quit looking
years ago.”

Brandon stood up with deci-
sion. “Let’s ask. There’s some-
thing funny here and I’m ju.st
Jabrified enough and anniver-
saried enough to want to find
out.”

“Sure,” said Shea, “but ask
who?”

“Ask Multivac,” said Brandon.

Shea’s eyes opened wide.
“Multivac! Say, Mr. Moore, do
you have a Multivac outlet
here?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never seen one, and I’ve
always wanted to.”

“It’s nothing to look at, Mike.
It just looks like a typewriter.
Don’t confuse a Multivac outlet
with Multivac itself. I don’t
know anyone who’s seen Multi-
vac.”

Moore smiled at the thought.

He doubted if ever in his life he
would meet any of the handful
of technicians that spent most
of their working days in a hid-
den spot in the bowels of Earth
tending a mile-long super-com-
puter that was the repository of
all the facts known to man ; that
guided man’s economy; directed
his scientific research; helped
make his political decisions; —
and had millions of circuits left
over to answer individual ques-
tions that did not violate the
ethics of privacy.

Brandon said as they moved
up the power-ramp to the second
floor, “I’ve been thinking of in-
stalling a Multivac, Jr. outlet
for the kids. Homework and
things, you know. And yet I
don’t want to make it just a
fancy and expensive crutch for
them. How do you work it,
Warren?”

Moore said, tersely, “They
show me the questions first. If
I don’t pass them, Multivac does
not see them.”

The Multivac outlet was in-
deed a simple typewriter ar-
rangement and little more.

Moore set up the co-ordinates
that opened his portion of the
planet-wide network of circuits
and said, “Now listen. For the
record, I’m against this and I’m
only going along because it’s the
anniversary and because I’m
just jackass enough to be curi-
ous. Now how ought I to phrase
the question?”

Brandon said, “Just ask: Are
pieces of the wreck of the Silver
Queen still being searched for in

A/AAZING STORIES

the neighborhood of Vesta by
Trans-space Insurance? It only
requires a simple yes or no.”

Moore shrugged and tapped
it out, while Shea watclied with
awe.

The spaceman said, “How
does it answer? Does it talk?”

Moore laughed gently, “Oh,
no. I don’t spend that kind of
money. This model just prints
the answer on a slip of tape that
comes out that slot.”

A short strip of tape did come
out as he spoke. Moore removed
it and after a glance, said,
“Well, Multivac says yes.” '

“Hah!” cried Brandon. “Told
you. Now ask why?”

“Now that’s silly. A question
like that would be obviously
against privacy. You’ll just get
a yellow state-your-reason.”

“Ask and find out. They have
not made the search for the
pieces secret. Maybe they’re not
making the reason secret.”

Moore shrugged. He tapped
but: Why is Trans-space Insur-
ance conducting its Silver Queen
search-project to which refer-
ence was made in the previous
question ?

A yellow slip clicked out al-
most at once : State Your Reason
For Requiring The Information
Requested.

“All right,” said Brandon, un-
abashed. “You tell it we’re the
three survivors and have a right
to know. Go ahead. Tell it.”

Moore tapped that out in un-
emotional phrasing and another
yellow slip was pushed out at

them: Your Reason Is Insuffi-
cient. No Answer Can Be Given.

Brandon said, “I don’t see
they have a right to keep that
secret.”

“That’s up to Multivac,” said
Moore. “It judges the reasons
given it and if it decides the
ethics of privacy is against an-
swering, that’s it. The govern-
ment itself couldn’t break those
ethics without a court order,
and the courts don’t go against
Multivac once in ten years. So
what are you going to do?”

Brandon jumped to his feet
and began the rapid walk up and
down the room that was so char-
acteristic of him. “All right,
then let’s figure it out for our-
selves. It’s something important
to justify all their trouble.
We’re agreed they’re not trying
to find evidence of sabotage, not
after twenty years. But Trans-
space must be looking for some-
thing; something so valuable
that it’s worth looking for all
this time. Now what could be
that valuable?”

“Mark, you’re a dreamer,”
said Moore.

Brandon obviously didn’t hear
him. “It can’t be jewels or mon-
ey or securities. There just
couldn’t be enough to pay them
back for what the search has
already cost them; not if the
Silver Queen were pure gold.
W’hat would be more valuable?”

“You can’t judge value,
Mark,” said Moore. “A letter
might be worth a hundredth of
a cent as waste-paper and yet
make a difference of a hundred

ANNIVERSARY

million dollars to a corporation,
depending on what's in the let-
ter.”

Brandon nodded his head vig-
orously. “Right. Documents.
Valuable papers. Now who would
be most likely to have papers
worth billions in his possession
on that trip?”

“How could anyone possibly
say?”

“How about Dr. Horace Quen-
tin? How about that, Warren?
He’s the one people remember
because he was so important.
What about the papers he might
have had with him; details of a
new discovery, maybe. — Damn
it, if I had only seen him on that
trip. He might, have told me
something, just in casual conver-
sation, you know. Did you ever
see him, Warren?"

“Not that I recall. Not to talk
to. So casual conversation with
me is out, too. Of course, I
might have passed him at some
time without knowing it.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” said
Shea, suddenly thoughtful. “I
think I remember something.
There was one passenger who
never left his cabin. The stew-
ard was talking about it. He
wouldn’t even come out for
meals.”

“And that was Quentin?” said
Brandon, stopping his pacing
and staring at the spaceman
eagerly.

“It might have been, Mr.
Brandon. It might have been
him. I don’t know that anyone
said it was. I don’t remeniber.
But it must have been a big

shot, because on a spaceship you
don’t fool around bringing
meals to a man’s cabin unless
he is a big shot.”.

“And Quentin was the big
shot on the trip,” said Brandon,
with satisfaction. “So he had
something in his cabin. Some-
thing very important. Some-
thing he was concealing.”

“He might just have been
space-sick,” said Moore, “except
that — ” He frowned and fell
silent.

“Go ahead,” said Brandon,
urgently. “You remember some-
thing, too?”

“Maybe. I told you I was sit-
ting next to Dr. Hester at the
last dinner. He was saying
something about hoping to meet
Dr. Quentin on the trip and not
having any luck.”

“Sure,” cried Brandon, “be-
cause Quentin wouldn’t come out
of his cabin.”

"He didn’t say that. We got
to talking about Quentin,
though. Now what was it he
said?” Moore put his hands to
his temples as though trying to
squeeze out the 'memory of
twenty years ago by main force.
“I can’t give you the exact
words, of course, but it was
something about Quentin being
very theatrical or a slave of
drama or something like that,
and they were heading out to
some scientific conference on
Ganymede and Quentin wouldn’t
even announce the title of his
paper.”

“It all fits.” Brandon resumed
AMAZING STORIES

his rapid pacing. “He had a new,
great discovery, which he was
'keeping absolutely secret, be-
cause he was going to spring it
on the Ganymede conference
and get maximum drama out of
it. He wouldn’t come out of his
cabin because he probably
thought Hester would pump him
— and . Hester would. I’ll bet.
AndjChen the ship hit the rock
and . Quentin was killed. Trans-
space' Insurance investigated,
got rumors of this new discov-
ery and figured that if they
gained control of it, they could
make back their losses and plen-
ty more. So they took ownership
of the ship and have been hunt-
ing for Quentin’s papers among
the pieces ever since.”

Moore smiled, in absolute af-
fection for the other man.
“Mark, that’s a beautiful theory.
The whole evening is w'orth it,
just watching you make some-
thing out of nothing.”

“Oh, yeah. Something out of
nothing? Let’s ask Multivac
again. I’ll pay the bill for it this
month.”

“It’s all right. Be my guest.
If you don’t mind, though. I’m
going to bring up the bottle of
Jabra. I want one more little
shot to catch up with you.”

“Me, too,” said Shea.

Brandon took his seat at the
typewriter. His fingers trembled
with eagerness as he tapped
out : What was the nature of Dr.
Horace Quentin’s final investiga-
tions ?”

Moore had returned with the

bottle and glasses, when the an-
swer came back; on white pa-
per this time. The answer was
long and the print was fine, con-
sisting for the most part of ref-
erences to scientific papers in
journals twenty years old.

Moore went aver it. “I’m no
physicist, but it looks to me as
though he were interested in
optics.”

Brandon shook his head impa-
tiently. “But all that is publish-
ed. We want son>e thing he had
not published yet.”

“We’ll never find out anything
about that.”

“The insurance company did.”

“That’s just your theory.”

Brandon was kneading his
chin with an unsteady hand.
“Let me ask Multivac one more
question.”

He sat down again and tapped
out: “Give me the name and
tube number of the surviving
colleagues of Dr. -Horace Quen-
tin from among those associated
with him at the University on
whose faculty he served.”

“How do you know he was on
a University faculty?” asked
Moore.

“If not, Multivac will tell us.”

A slip popped out. It contain-
ed only one name.

Moore said, “Are you plan-
ning to call the man?”

“I sure am,” said Brandon.
— Otis Fitzimmons, with a De-
troit tube-number. Warren, may
I—”

“Be my guest, Mark. It’s still
part of the game.”

Brandon set up the combina-

ANNIVERSARY

tion on Moore’s tube keyboard.
A woman’s voice answered.
Brandon asked for Dr. Fitzim-
mons and there was a short
wait.

Then a thin voice said,
“Hello.” It sounded old.

Brandon said, “Dr. Fitzim-
mons, I’m representing Trans-
space Insurance in the matter
of the late Dr. Horace Quen-
tin — ”

(“For heaven’s sake, Mark,”
whispered Moore, but Brandon
held up a sharply restraining
hand.)

There was a pause so long
that a tube break-down began
to seem possible and then the old
voice said, “After all these
years ? Again ?”

(Brandon snapped his fingers
in an irrepressible gesture of
triumph.)

But he said smoothly, almost
glibly, “We’re still trying to find
out, doctor, if you have remem-
bered further details about what
Dr. Quentin might have had
with him on that last trip that
would pertain to his last unpub-
lished discovery.”

“Well — ” There was an impa-
tient clicking of the tongue.
“I’ve told you, I don’t know. I
don’t want to be bothered with
this again. I don’t know that
there was anything. The man
hinted, but he was always hint-
ing about some gadget or other.”

“What gadget, sir?”

“I tell you I don’t know. He
u.sed a name once and I told you
about that. I don’t think it’s sig-
nificant.”

“We don’t have the name in
our records, sir."

“Well, you should have. Uh,
what was that name? An op-
tikon, that’s it.”

“With a K?”

“C or k. I don’t know or care.
Now, please, I do not wish to be
disturbed again about this.
Good-bye.” He was still mum-
bling querulously, when the line
went dead.

Brandon was pleased.

Moore said, “Mark, that was
the stupidest thing you could
have done. Claiming a fraudu-
lent identity on the tube is il-
legal. If he wants to make trou-
ble for you — ”

“Why should he? He’s forgot-
ten about it already. But don’t
you see, Warren? Trans-space
has been asking him about this.
He kept saying he’d explained
all this before.”

“All right. But you'd assumed
that much. What else do you
know?”

“We also know,” said Bran-
don, “that Quentin’s gadget was
called an optikon.”

“Fitzimmons didn’t sound cer-
tain about that. And even so,
since we already know he was
specializing in optics toward the
end, a name like ‘optikon’ does
not push us any further for-
ward.”

“And Trans-space Insurance
is looking either for the optikon
or for papers concerning it.
Maybe Quentin kept the details
in his hat and just had a model
of the instrument. After all,

A/AAZING STORIES

Shea said they were picking up
metal objects. Right?”

“There was a bunch of metal
junk in the pile,” agreed Shea.

“They’d leave that in space if
it were papers they were after.
So that’s what we want, an in-
strument that might be called
an optikon.”

“Even if all your theories
were correct, Mark, and we’re
looking for an optikon, the
search is absolutely hopeless
now,” said Moore, flatly. “I
doubt that more than ten per-
cent of the debris would remain
in orbit about Vesta. Vesta’s
escape velocity is practically
nothing. It was just a lucky
thrust in a lucky direction and
at a lucky velocity that put our
section of the wreck in orbit.
The rest is gone, scattered all
over the Solar system in any
conceivable , orbit about the
Sun.”

“They’ve been picking up
pieces,” said Brandon.

“Yes, the ten percent that
managed to make a Vestan orbit
out of it. That’s all.”

Brandon wasn’t giving up. He
said thoughtfully, “Suppose it
were there and they hadn’t
found it. Could someone have
beat them to it?”

Mike Shea laughed. “We were
right there, but we sure didn’t
walk off with anything but our
skins, and glad to do that much.
Who else?”

“That’s right,” agreed Moore,
“and if anyone else picked it up,
why are they keeping it a se-
cret?”

“Maybe they don’t know what
it is.”

“Then how do we go about — ”
Moore broke off and turned to
Shea, “What did you say?”

Shea looked blank. “Who me?”

“Just now, about us being
there.” Moore’s eyes narrowed.
He shook his head as though to
clear it, then whispered, “Great
Galaxy!”

“What is it?” asked Brandon,
tensely. “What’s the matter,
Warren?”

“I’m not sure. You’re driving
me mad with your theories; so
mad. I’m beginning to take them
seriously, I think. You know, we
did take some things out of the
wreck with us. I mean besides
our clothes and what personal
belongings we still had. Or at
least I did.”

“What?”

“It was when I was making
my way across the outside of the
wreckage — Space, I seem to be
there now, I see it so clearly —
I picked up some items and put
them in the pocket of my space-
suit. I don’t know why ; I wasn’t
myself, really. I did it without
thinking. And then, well, I held
on to them. Souvenirs, I sup-
pose. I brought them back to
Earth.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t
stayed in one place, you know.”

“You didn’t throw them out,
did you?”

“No, but things do get lost
when you move.”

“If you didn’t throw them

ANNIVERSARY

out, they must be somewhere in
this house.”

“If they didn’t get lost. I
swear I don’t recall seeing them
in fifteen years.”

“What were they?”

Warren Moore said, “One was
a fountain-pen, as I recall; a
real antique, the kind that used
an ink-spray cartridge. What
gets me, though, is that the oth-
er was a small field-glass, not
more than about six inches long.
You see what I mean? A field-
glass ?”

“An optikon,” shouted Bran-
don. “Sure!”

“It’s just a coincidence,” said
Moore, trying to remain level-
headed. “Just a curious coinci-
dence.”

But Brandon wasn’t having it.
“A coincidence, nuts! Trans-
space couldn’t find the optikon
on the wreck and they couldn’t
find it in space because you had
it all along.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Come on, we've got to find
the thing now.”

Moore blew out his breath.
“Well, I’ll look, if that’s what
you want, but I doubt that I’ll
find it. Okay, let’s start with the
storage level. That’s the logical
place.”

Shea chuckled. “The logical
place is usually the worst place
to look.” But they all headed for
the power-ramp once more and
the additional flight upward.

The storage level had a musty,
unused odor to it. Moore turn^
on the precipitron. “I don’t

think we’ve precipitated the
dust in two years. That shows
you how often I’m up here. Now',
let’s see; if it’s anywhere at all,
it would be in with the bachelor
collection; I mean the junk I’ve
been hanging on to since bache-
lor days. We can start here.”

Moore started leafing through
the contents of plastic collapsi-
bles while Brandon kept peering
anxiously over his shoulder.

Moore said, “What do you
know? My college year-book. I
was a sonist in those days; a
real bug on it. In fact, I man-
aged to get a voice recording
with the picture of every senior
in this book.” He tapped its cov-
er fondly. “You could swear
there was nothing there but the
usual trimensional photos, but
each one has an imprisoned — ”

He grew aware of Brandon’s
frown and said, “Okay, I’ll keep
looking.”

He gave up on the collapsibles
and opened a trunk of heavy,
old-fashioned woodite. He sepa-
rated the contents of the various
compartments.

Brandon said, “Hey, is that
it?”

He pointed to a small cylinder
that rolled out on the floor with
a small clunk.

Moore said, “I don’t — Yes!
That's the pen. There it is. And
here’s the field-glass'. Neither
one works, of course. They’re
both broken. At least I suppose
the pen’s broken. Something’s
loose and rattles in it. Hear? I
wouldn’t have the slightest idea
as to how to fill it so I can check

AMAZING STORIES

as to whether it realiy works.
They haven’t even made ink-
spray cartridges in years.”

Brandon held it under the
light. “It has initials on it.”

“Oh? I don’t remember notic-
ing any.”

“It’s pretty worn down. It
looks like J.K.Q.”

“Q?”

“Right, and that’s an unusual
letter with which to start a last
name. This pen might have be-
longed to Quentin; an heirloom
he kept for luck or sentiment. It
might have belonged to a great-
grandfather in the days when
they used pens like this ; a
great-grandfather called Jason
Knight Quentin or Judah Kent
Quentin or something like that.
We can check the names of
Quentin’s ancestors through
Multivac.”

Moore nodded, “I think maybe
we should. See, you’ve got me as
crazy as you are.”

“And if this is so, it proves
you picked it up in Quentin’s
room ; so you picked up the field-
glass there, too.”

“Now hold it. I don’t remem-
ber that I picked them both up
in the same place. I don’t re-
member the scrounging over the
outside of the wreck that well.”

Brandon turned the small
field-glass over and over under
the light. “No initials here."

“Did you expect any?"

“I don’t see anything in fact,
except this narrow joining mark
here.” He ran his thumbnail
into the fine groove that circled

the glass near its thicker end.
He tried to twist it unsuccess-
fully. “One piece.” He put it to
his eye. “This thing doesn’t
work.”

“I told you it was broken. No
lenses.”

Shea broke in. “You’ve got to
expect a little damage when a
spaceship hits a good-sized me-
teor and goes to pieces.”

“So even if this were it,” said
Moore, pessimistic again, “if
this were the optikon, it would
not do us any good.”

He took the field-glass from
Brandon and felt along the emp-
ty rims. “You can’t even tell
where the lenses belonged.
There’s no groove I can feel into
which they might have been
seated. It’s as if there never —
Hey!” He exploded the syllable
violently.

“Hey what?” said Brandon.

“The name! The name of the
thing!”

“Optikon, you mean?”

“Optikon, I don’t mean! Fit-
zimmons, on the tube, called it
an optikon and we thought he
said ‘an — optikon.’ ”

“Well, he did,” said Brandon.

“Sure,” said Shea. “I heard
him.”

“You just thought you heard
him. He said, ‘anoptikon.’
— Don’t you get it? Not ‘an
optikon,’ two words, ‘anoptikon,’
one word.”

“Oh,” said Brandon, blankly.
“And what’s the difference.”

“A hell of a difference. ‘An
optikon’ would mean an instru-
ment with lenses, but ‘anopti-

ANNIVERSARY

kon,’ one word, has the Greek
prefix ‘an-’ which means ‘no.’
Words of Greek derivation use
it for ‘no.’ Anarchy means ‘no
government,’ anemia means ‘no
blood,’ anonymous means ‘no
name’ and anoptikon means — ”

“No lenses,” cried Brandon.

“Right! Quentin must have
been working on an optical de-
vice without lenses and this may
be it and it may not be broken.”

Shea said, “But you don’t see
anything when you look through
it”

"It must be set to neutral,”
said Moore. “There must be
some way of adjusting it.” Like
Brandon, he placed it in both
hands and tried to twist it about
that circumscribing groove. He
placed pressure on it, grunting.

“Don’t break it,” said Bran-
don.

“It’s giving. Either it’s sup-
posed to be stiff or else its cor-
roded shut.” He stopped, looked
at the instrument impatiently
and put it to his eye again. He
whirled, unpolarized a window
and looked out at the lights of
the city.

“I’ll be dumped in Space,” he
breathed.

Brandon said, “What? What?”

Moore handed the instrument
to Brandon wordlessly. Brandon
put it to his eyes and cried out
sharply. “It’s a telescope.”

Shea said at once, “Let me
see.”

They spent nearly an 'hour
with it, converting it into a tele-
scope with turns in one direc-

tion, a microscope with turns in
the other.

“How does it work?” Brandon
kept asking.

“I don’t know,” Moore kept
saying. In the end, he said, “I’m
sure it involves concentrated
force-fields. We are turning
against considerable field resist-
ance. With larger instruments,
power-adjustment will be re-
quired.”

“It’s a pretty cute trick,” said
Shea.

“It’s more than that,” said
Moore. “I’ll bet it represents a
completely new turn in theoreti-
cal physics. It focuses light
without lenses, and it can be ad-
justed to gather light over a
wider and wider area without
any change in focal length. I’ll
bet we could duplicate the five-
hundred-inch Ceres telescope in
one direction and an electron
microscope in the other. What’s
more I don’t see any chromatic
aberration, so it must bend light
of all wave-lengths equally. May-
be it bends radio waves and
gamma rays also. Maybe it dis-
torts gravity, if gravity is some
kind of radiation. Maybe — ”

“Worth money?” asked Shea,
breaking in dryly.

"All kinds if someone can fig-
ure out how it works.”

“Then we don’t go to Trans-
space Insurance with this. We
go to a lawyer first. Did we sign
these things away with our sal-
vage rights or didn’t we? You
had them already in your pos-
session before signing the pa-
per. For that matter, is the pa-

AMAZING STORIES

per any good if we didn’t know
what we were signing away?
Maybe it might be considered
fraud.”

“As a matter of fact,” said
Moore, “with something like
this, I don’t know if any private
company ought to own it. We
ought to check with some Gov-
ernment agency. If there’s mon-
ey in it — ”

But Brandon was pounding
both fists on his knees. “To hell
with the money, Warren. I
mean I’ll take any money that
comes my way but that’s not the
important thing. We’re going to
be famous, man, famous! Imag-
ine the story. A fabulous treas-
ure lost in space. A giant corpo-
ration combing space for twenty
years to find it and all the time
we, the forgotten ones, have it
in our possession. Then, on the
twentieth anniversary of the
original loss, we find it again. If
this thing works ; if anoptics be-
comes a great new scientific
technique, they’ll never forget
us.”

Moore grinned, then started

laughing. “That’s right. You did
it, Mark. You did just what you
set out to do. You’ve rescued us
from being marooned in obliv-
ion.”

“We all did it,” said Brandon.
“Mike Shea started us off with
the necessary basic information.
I w’orked out the theory, and
you had the instrument.”

“Okay. It’s late, and the wife
will be back soon, so let’s get
the ball rolling right away. Mul-
tivac will tell us which agency
would be appropriate and
who — ”

“No, no,” said Brandon. “Rit-
ual first. The closing toast of the
anniversary, please, and with
the appropriate change. Won’t
you oblige, Warren ?” He passed
over the still half-full bottle of
Jabra water.

Carefully, Moore filled each
small glass precisely to the brim.
“Gentlemen,” he said solemnly,
“a toast.” The three raised the
glasses in unison. “Gentlemen,
I give you the Silver Queen sou-
venirs, we used to have.”

THE END

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You can measure everything these days — fteof,
light, gravity, reflexes, force-fields, star-drives.
And now I know there even is a

MEASURE FOR A LONER

By JIM HARMON

S O, GENERAL, I came in to
tell you I’ve found the lone-
liest man in the world for the
Space Force.

How am I supposed to rate his
loneliness for you? In Megasor-
rows or Kilofears? I suspect I
know quite a library on the sub-
ject, but you know more about
stripes and bars. Don’t try to
stop me this time. General.

Now that you mention it, I’m
not drunk. I had to have some-
thing to back me up so I stopped
off at the dispensery and stole
a needle.

I want you to get off my back
with that kind of talk. I’ve got
enough there — it bends me over
like I had bad kidneys. It isn’t
any of King Kong’s little broth-
ers. They over rate the stuff. It
isn’t the way you’ve been riding
me either. Never mind what I’m
carrying. Whatever it is — and

believe me, it is — I have to get
rid of it.

Let me tell it, for God’s sake.

Then for Security’s sake? I
thought you would let me tell it.
General.

I’ve been coming in here and
giving you pieces of it for
months but now I want to let
you be drenched in the whole
thing. You’re going to take it
all.

There were the two of them,
the two lonely men, and I found
them for you.

You remember the way I
found them for you.

The intercom on my blond
desk made an electronic noise at
me and the words I had been ar-
ranging in my mind for the
morning letters splattered into
alphabet soup like a printer
dropping a prepared slug of
type.

I made the proper motion to
still the sound.

“Yes,” I grunted.

My secretary cleared her
throat on my time.

“Dr. Thorn,” she said, “there’s
a Mr. Madison here to see you.
He lays claim to be from the
Star Project.”

He could come in and file his
claim, I told the girl.

I rummaged in the wastebas-
ket and uncrumpled the morn-
ing’s facsimile newspaper. It
was full of material about the
Star Project.

We were building Man’s first
interstellar spaceship.

A surprising number of peo-
ple considered it important. Flip-
ping from the rear to page one.
Wild Bill Star in the comics who
had been blasting all the way to
forty-first sub-space universe for
decades was harking back to the
good old days of Man’s first star
flight (which he had made him-
self through the magic of time
travel), the editor was calling
the man to make the jaunt the
Lindbergh of Space, and the
staff photographer displayed a
still of a Space Force pilot in
pressure suit up front with his
face blotted out by an air-brush-
ed interrogation mark.

Who was going to be the
Lindbergh of Space?

We had used up the Columbus
of Space, the Magellan of Space,
the Van Reck of Space. Now it
was time for the Lone Eagle,
one man who would wait out the
light years to Alpha Centauri.

I remembered the first Lind-
bergh.

I rode a bus fifty miles to see
him at an Air Force Day cele-
bration when I was a dewy-ear-
ed kid. It’s funny how kids still
worship heroes who did every-
thing before they were even born.
Uncle Max had told me about
standing outside the hospital with
a bunch of boys his own age the
evening Babe Ruth died of can-
cer. Lindbergh seemed like an
old man to me when I finally saw
him, but still active. Nobody had
forgotten him. When his speech
was over I cheered him with the
rest just as if I knew what he
had been talking about.

But I probably knew more
about what he meant then as a
boy than I did feeling the real-
ity of the newspaper in my
hands. Grown-up, I could only
smile at myself for wanting to
go to the stars myself.

Madison rapped on my office
door and breezed in efficiently.

I’ve always thought Madison
was a rather irritating man.
Likable but irritating. He’s too
good looking in an unassuming
masculine way to dress so neatly
— it makes him look like a man-
nequin. That polite way of his
of using small words slowly and
distinctly proves that he loves
his fellow man — even if his fel-
low always does have less brains
or authority than Madison him-
self. That belief would be for-
givable in him if it wasn’t so
often true.

Madison folded himself into
the canary yellow client’s chair

MEASURE FOR A LONER

at my direction, and took a
leather-bound pocket secretary
from inside his almost-too-snug
jacket.

“Dr. Thorn,” he said expan-
sively, “we need you to help us
locate an atavism.”

I flicked professional smile
No. Three at him lightly.

“Tm a historical psychologist,”
I told him. “That sounds in my
line. Which of your ancestors are
you interested in having me
analyze ?”

“I used the word ‘atavism’ to
mean a reversion to the primi-
tive.”

I made a pencil mark on my
desk pad. I could make notes as
well as he could read them.

“Yes, I see,” I murmured.
“We don’t use the term that way.
Perhaps you don’t undei'stand
my work. It’s been an honest
way to make a living for a few
generations but it’s so specializ-
ed it might sound foolish to
someone outside the psychologi-
cal industry. I psychoanalyze his-
torical figures for history books
(of course), and scholars, inter-
ested descendants, what all, and
that’s all I do.”

“All you have done,” Madison
admitted, “but your government
is certain that you can do this
new work for them — in fact, that
you are one of the few men pre-
pared to locate this esoteric —
that is, this odd aberration
since I understand you often
have to deal with it in analyzing
the past. Doctor, we want you
to find us a lonely man.”

I laid my chrome yellow pen-

cil down carefully beside the
cream-colored pad.

“History is full of loneliness
— most of the so-called great
men were rather neurotic — but I
thought, Madison, that intro-
spection was pretty much of a
thing of the, well, past.”

The government representa-
tive inhaled deeply and steepled
his manicured fingers.

“Our system of childhood psy-
cho-conditioning succeeds in
burying loneliness in the sub-
conscious so completely that even
the records can’t reveal if it was
ever present.”

I cleared my throat in order to
stall, to think.

“I’m not acquainted with con-
temporary psychology, Madison.
This comes as news to me. You
mean people aren’t really well-
adjust^ today, that they have
just been conditioned to act as if
they were?”

He nodded. “Yes, that’s it.
It’s ironic. Now we need a lone-
ly man and we can’t find him.”

“To pilot the interstellar
spaceship?”

“For the Evening Star, yes,”
Madison agreed.

I picked up my pencil and held
it between my two index fingers.
I couldn’t think of a damned
thing to say.

“The whole problem,” Madison
was saying, “goes back to the
early days of space travel. Men
were confined in a small area
facing infinite space for meas-
ureless periods in freefall. Men
cracked — and ships, they crack-

AMAZING STORIES

ed up. But as space travel ad-
vanced ships got larger, carried
more people, more ties and re-
minders of human civilization.
Pilots became more normal"

I made myself look up at the
earnest young man.

“But now,” I said, “now you
want me to find you an abnor-
mal pilot who is used to being
alone, who can stand it, maybe
even like it?”

“Right.”

I constructed a genuine smile
for him for the first time.

“Madison, do you really think
7 can find your man when evi-
dently all the government agen-
cies have failed?”

The government representa-
tive pocketed his notebook deftly
and then spread his hands
clumsily for an instant.

“At least. Doctor,” he said,
“you may know it if you do find
him.”

It was a lonely job to find a
lonely man. General, and maybe
it was a crooked job to walk a
crooked mile to find a crooked
man.

I had to do it alone. No one
else had enough experience in
primitive psychology to recog-
nize the phenomenon of loneli-
ness, even as Madison had said.

The working conditions suited
me. I had to think by myself but
I had a comfortable staff to carry
out my ideas. I liked my new of-
fice and the executive apartment
the government supplied me. I
had authority and respect and I
had security. The government

assured me they would find fur-
ther use for my services after I
found them their man. I knew
this was to keep me from drag-
ging my tracks. But nevertheless
I got right down to work.

I found Gordon Meyverik ex-
actly five weeks from the day
Madison first visited me in my
old office.

“Of course, I planned the
whole thing. Dr. Thorn,” Gor-
don said crisply.

I knew what he meant al-
though I hadn't guessed it be-
fore. He could tell it to me
himself, I decided.

“Doesn’t seem much to brag
about,” I said. “Anybody who
can make up a grocery list
should be able to figure out how
to isolate himself on Seal Is-
land.”

He sat forward, a lean Viking
with a hot Latin glance, very
confident of himself.

“I reckoned on you locating
me, on you hustling me back to
pilot the Evening Star. That’s
why I holed in there.”

“I can’t accept your story,” I
lied cheerfully. “Nobody is go-
ing to maroon himself on an
island for three years because of
a wild possibility like that.”

Meyverik smiled and his sure-
ness swelled out until it almost
jabbed me in the stomach.

“I took a broad gamble,” he
said, “but it hit the wire, didn’t
it?”

I didn’t reply, but he had his
answer.

Instead I scanned the report
Madison had given me from In-

MEASURE FOR A LONER

telligence concerning the man’s
unorthodox behavior.

Meyverik had quit his post-
graduate studies and passed by
the secured job that had been
waiting for him eighteen months
in a genial government office to
barricade himself in an old shel-
ter on Seal Island. It vt'as hard
to know what to make of it. He
had brought impressive stores of
food with him, books, sound and
vision tapes but not telephone or
television. For the next three
years he had had no contact with
humanity at all.

And he said he had planned it
all.

“Sure,” he drawled. “I knew
the government was looking for
somebody to steer the interstel-
lar ship that’s been gossip for
decades. That job,” he said dis-
tinctly, "is one I would give a
lot to settle into.”

I looked at him across my un-
littered brand new desk and
accepted his irritating blond
masculinity, disliked him, admir-
ed him, and continued to exam-
ine him to decide on my final
evaluation.

“You’ve given three years al-
ready,” I said, examining the
sheets of the report with which
I was thoroughly familiar.

He twitched. He didn’t like
that, not spending three years.
It was spendthrift, even if a
good buy. He was planning on
winding up somewhere impor-
tant and to do it he had to invest
his years properly.

“You are trying to make me
believe you deliberately extrapo-

lated the government’s need for
a man who could stand being
alone for long periods, and then
tried to phoney up references for
the work by staying on that is-
land?”

“I don’t like that word
‘phoney’,” Meyverik growled.

“No? You name your word for
it”

Meyverik unhinged to his full
height.

“It was proof,” he said. “A
test”

“A man can’t test himself.”

“A lot you know,” the big
blond snorted.

“I know,” I told him drily. "A
man who isn’t a hopeless maniac
depressive can’t consciously cre-
ate a test for himself that he
knows he will fail. You proved
you could stay alone on an is-
land, buster. You didn’t prove
you could stay alone in a space-
ship out in the middle of infin-
ity for three years. Why didn’t
you rent a conventional rocket
and try looking at some of our
local space? It all looks much the
same.”

Meyverik sat down.

“I don’t know why I didn’t do
that,” he whispered.

Probably for the first time
since he had got clever enough
to beat up his big brother Mey-
verik was doubting himself, just
a little, for just a time.

I don’t know whether it was
good or bad for him — contempo-
rary psychology isn’t in my line
— but I knew I couldn’t trust a
cocky kid.

AMAZING STORIES

But I had to find out if he
could still hit the target un-
cocked.

Stan Johnson was our second
lonely man, remember, General?

He was stubborn.

I questioned him for a half
hour the first day, two hours the
second and on the third I turned
him over to Madison.

Then as I was having my
lunch I suddenly thought of
something and made steps back
to my office.

I got there just in time to
grab Madison’s bony wrist.

The thing in his fist was silver
and shai’p, a hypodermic needle.
Johnson’s forearm was tanned
below the torn pastel sleeve. Two
sad-faced young men were hold-
ing him politely by the shoulders
in the canvas chair. Johnson met
my glance expressionlessly.

I tugged on Madison’s arm
sharply.

“What’s in that damned
sticker?”

“Polypenthium.” Madison’s
face was as blank as Johnson’s
— only his body seemed at once
tired and taut.

“What’s it for?” I rasped.

“You’re the psychologist,” he
said sharply.

I met his eyes and held on but
it was impossible to stare him
down.

“I don’t know about physical
methods, I told you. I’ve been
dealing with people in books,
films, tapes all my life, not living
men up till now, can’t you absorb
that?”

“Apparently I’ve had more
experience with these things
than you then. Doctor. Shall I
proceed?”

“You shall not,” I cried
omnisciently. “I know enough to
understand we can’t get the re-
sults the government wants by
drugs. You going to put that
away?”

Madison nodded once.

“All right,” he said.

I unshackled my fingers and
he put the shiny needle away in
its case, in his suitcoat pocket.

“You understand. Thorn,” he
said, “that the general won’t like
this.”

I turned around and looked at
him.

“Did he order you to drug
Johnson?”

The government agent shook
his head.

“I didn’t think so.” I was be-
ginning to understand govern-
ment operations. “He only want-
ed it done. Get out.”

Madison and his assistants
marched out in orthodox Euclid-
ian triangle formation.

The doors hissed shut.

“You know what?” The words
jerked out from Johnson. “I
think the bunch of you are
crazy. Crazy.”

I decided to treat him like a
client. Maybe that was the way
contemporary psychologists han-
dled their men.

I sat on the edge of the desk
jauntily, confidently, and tried to
let the domino mask up a father
image.

MEASURE FOR A LONER

“You may as well get it
straight, Stan. The government
needs you and it’s pointless for
you to say that need is unconsti-
tutional or anything. Bring it
up and it won’t be long. When
survival is outside the rules, the
rules change.”

The eyes of Johnson were
strikingly like Meyverik’s, dark
and unsettled. Only this boj',
younger, smaller than the Nor-
dic, had an appropriate skin
tone, stained by the tropical sun
somewhere in his ancestral past.
He dropped his gaze, expelled his
breath mightily and pounded one
angular knee with a half-closed
fist.

"I’m not complaining about
conscription without representa-
tion, Doctor, but I can’t make
any sense out of these fool ques-
tions you keep firing at me. What
in blazes are you trying to get
at? What kind of reason are you
after for my staying by myself ?
I just do it because I like it that
way.”

With a galvanic jolt, I realized
he was telling the painfully sim-
ple truth. I groaned at the real-
ization.

Meyverik had convinced all of
us that in our well-adjusted or
at any rate well-conditioned
world somebody had to have
some purposeful reason in lone-
liness, solitude, so on that one
instance our thinking had al-
ready been patterned, discarding
all the other evidence of genera-
tions that the lonely man was
only a personality type, like
Johnson.

I felt I had achieved at least
the quantum state of a fool.

Johnson silently studied the
half-cupped hands laying in his
lap.

“The hunting lodge in the
Andes seemed as good a place as
any to live after mother and
father were killed. You might
think it was lonesome at night
in the mountain-s, but it isn’t at
all. You aren’t alone when you
can watch the burning worlds
shadow the bow of God . . .”

I cleared my throat. The poor
kid sounded like he W’ould begin
spouting something akin to
poetry next.

“So I believe you,” I told him.
“That doesn’t finish it. We have
to convince them. I don’t like
this, but the simplest way
would be to volunteer for their
hibitor injection. I’ve found cut
Madison and his crowd don’t be-
lieve men aw’ake, only assorted
dopes.”

Johnson deflated his area of
the room with his breath intake.

“Okay,” he said at last. “I
guess so.”

When Johnson gave us what
we needed to clear the problem,
it didn’t take me long to finish
processing the rest of the hand-
ful of possible loners we had
located. Unlike Johnson, all the
rest had reasons for their self-
imposed loneliness. Unlike Mey-
verik none of their reasons wei*e
associated with the interstellar
flight. They instead involved lit-
erary research, swindles, isolated
paranoid insanity and other

AMAZING STORIES

things in which the government
had no interest.

Suddenly I found my job was
done and that we had located
only the two of them.

Madison read my final report
braced on the edge of my desk,
his hand comradely on my shoul-
der.

“Good job, Doc,” he vouched
replacing the papers on my blot-
ter with a final rustle. “Now I’ve
got news for you. The govern-
ment wants you to test these
boys for us now that you've
found 'em for us.”

I closed my jaw. “That’s com-
pletely out of line — my line. I
know you need a contemporary
man for that job.”

Madison punched me on the
bicep, fast enough to hurt.

“Doc, after this project you
know more about contemp’ stuff
than any professor who got his
degree studying the textbooks
you wrote.”

It was impossible to dislike
Madison except for practiced pe-
riods — that was probably one
reason he had his job.

“All right,” I growled. “Get
your dirty pants off my clean
desk and I’ll get out the bottle.
We’ll — celebrate, huh?”

But you know how I felt, Gen-
eral? You remember how I tried
to get out of it. I felt like I had
led in the lambs and now I had
to help shear them. As a part-
time historian I can tell you
there’s a word for that — Judas
goat. Give or take a word.

“It isn’t the real thing, Doc,”

Madison spelled out for me,
wearing a lemon twist of smile.

I looked at the twin banks of
gauge-facings and circuit hous-
ings in which centered TV
screens picturing either Mey-
verik or Johnson. Red and sea-
green lights chased each other
around the control boards, died,
were born again. On the screens
the three color negatives mixed
to purple, shifted through a se-
ries of wrong combinations and
settled to normal as the stereo-
oscillation echoed, convexed in-
sanely, and deepened to hold.
Video reception is lousy from
five hundred thousand miles out.

I was too eye-heavy to be sur-
prised.

“Don’t tell me this is The
Strange Flight of Richard Clay-
ton all over again?”

Madison clapped me on the
shoulder and breathed mint at
me, eyes on twittering round
faces.

“Who wrote that? Poe? No,
no mock-up to fake space condi-
tions for them but calculate the
cost of the real interstellar ship.
We couldn’t trust either of them
with it yet. You didn’t really
think we could afford two ships.
Why do you think we haven’t
told one man about his opposite
in a second ship? No safety mar-
gin allowable in our appropria-
tion, Doc. Or so they tell me.
There’s enough fuel and food to
take Johnson and Mej'verik a
long way but not the distance.”

He shook his lean head almost
wistfully.

“Damn it, Madison, do you

MEASURE FOR A LONER

mean I’ve been beating my lobes
out for weeks for nothing? I
tested them. I checked them out.
Either was capable of making
the flight successfully — for their
own different reasons.”

Madison took his hand off my
shoulder and made a fist of it.

“I’m not questioning your de-
cision! Will you ram that
through your obscene skull,
Thorn!”

"Who is?” I whispered.

"Not me. Not I, not I.”

“The general,” I announced.

“Just not me.” Was he actual-
ly trembling? But it wasn’t
concern about what I thought of
him. Somebody closer, maybe.
Things were building up for
him.

He jammed his nose almost up
against the glass dial surfaces,
swaying gently in his cups, star-
ing slightly cross-eyed at the
arrowed numbers.

"You’ll continue your tests
from here,” Madison said. "Tell
them they are going to die.”

My face was at once cool and
damp.

“That’s a tough examination,”
I gasped.

“A lie,” Madison told me.
“The boys at Psychicentre work-
ed out the problems.”

“You told me you wanted me!”
I screamed at him furiously.

“Control your passionate,
dainty voice. You worked well
with those two. The experts
could work through you better.”

“Right through me, like a
razor blade through margarine,”
I said. “It’s not fair.”

"No, it’s science. Psychology
as a science, not an art. Don’t
damn me — I’m not the inventor,”
Madison continued.

“I’m one of them,” I murmur-
ed, “but I’d just as rather you
didn’t blame me either.”

Madison punched the button
for me with a palsied, manicured
thumb.

“Guess what, Mejwerik?” I
said viciously. “You’re going to
die.”

“What the blazes are you bab-
bling about?” the blond doll
snapped at me from the box of
the video screen.

I scanned the typed, stiff-back-
ed Idiot Prompters Madison
shoved into my fist. “It’s — true.
You can’t get out alive.”

“What’s happened?” His face
perfectly blank.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,”
I said. “They have just informed
me it was planned this way. It
wasn’t possible to build a round-
trip rocket yet. You need a lot
of fuel to make course adjust-
ments for the curvature of space,
so forth. The radio will send
back your reports on the Alpha
Centaurian planets. Undoubtedly
by all rules of probability they
won’t support life without a
mass of equipment. They suck-
ered me too, Meyverik, I swear.
You turning back?”

“No,” he said almost imme-
diately.

“I thought you were after the
rewards, trained to get them.
You won’t be able to enjoy them
posthumously.”

AfAAZING STORIES

The video blanked. He had
turned off his camera.

“I guess I thought so,” Mey-
verik’s voice said. “But I kind
of like it out here — alone. I like
people but back there there's no
one to tcfuch. They smother you
but you can’t reach them. I can’t
do anything better back there
than I can do here.”

Madison got a bottle and he
and I got sloppily drunk, leaning
on each other, singing innocently
obscene songs of our youth. The
technicians, good government
men, were openly disgusted with
us.

Two hours after we had con-
tacted Meyverik, I left Madison
snoring on the desk and lurched
to the control board, bunching
my soiled shirt at the throat
with my hand.

I called Johnson.

“Going to die, Johnson. Trick-
ed you. Can’t get back, Johnson.
Not ever. No fuel. Ha, you can’t
ever go home again, Johnson.
Like that, you damned runny-
nosed little poet?”

His dark face worked weakly.

Ha, he sure as thunderation
didn’t like it.

He asked for the bloody de-
tails and I fed them to him.

“Turning back, aren’t you?” I
jeered.

“I just wanted a place and a
time for thinking,” he said
across the Solar System. “But
I’ll die and I don’t know if you
can dream in death.”

“Just what I thought,” I
sneered.

“I’m not turning back,” he
said slowly. “People need me.
I’ve got a job to do. Haven’t I?
Haven’t I?”

“No,” I screamed at him.
“You’re just using that as an
excuse to kill yourself. Don’t try
to tell me you’re not weak ! Don’t
you try to make me think you’re
strong! Hear me, Johnson, hear
me ?”

But he couldn’t hear me.

One of the government techni-
cians had broken the contact be-
fore that last spurt.

“This is good,” Madison said,
pawing fuzzily at his pocket.
“Really — good.”

I studied the three or four
watchdials wobbling up and
down my elongated wrist. They
seemed to say it was almost sun-
rise.

I leered at Madison. “Yeah,
yeah, what is it? Huh, huh?”

He shoved a crumpled card
into my lax fingers.-

“Now,” he said, “now tell
them—”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Tell them the whole thing is
useless.”

My stomach retched drily,
grinding the sober pills to dust
between its ulcerating walls.

“Meyverik,” I said to the
empty video tube, “they made a
mistake. They underestimated
curvature. You can’t reach Alpha
Centauri. You can’t correct
enough. Free space is all you’ll
hit. Ever. You may as well come
home.”

MEASURE FOR A LONER

The soft voice came out of no-
where, from nothing.

“I don’t want to come back. I
like it here. This is what I’ve
always been trying to get and
I never knew it.”

Madison grabbed my arm with
pronged fingers.

“Shut up. Doc. That’s just the
way the government wants him
to be.”

"Johnson,” I said to the creas-
ed face in the screen, “they made
a mistake. They underestimated
curvature. You can’t reach Al-
pha Centauri. You can’t correct
enough. Free space is all you’ll
hit. Ever, You may as well come
—back.”

Johnson sighed, a whisper of
breath across the miles.

"I’ll keep going. No one has
ever been so far out before. I
can report valuable things.”

I stood there. The textbooks
report it takes muscular effort
to frown, more so than to smile.
But my face seemed to flow into
the lines of pain so hard it
ached without any effort of my
will. And I knew it would hurt
to smile.

“They passed the final test,”
Madison said at my side. “Tell
them it was a test.”

I would do it for him. I didn’t
need to do it for myself.

I motioned the technician to
open both channels.

“The ship you are in,” I said,
with no need to tell them of each
other, “is not the real Evening
Star. It will not take you to the
stars. This has been only a test
to credit your fitness to pilot the

real interstellar craft of the Star
Project. You must return to the
Lunar Satellite. This is a direct
order.”

The two screens remained
blank. Only the windless silence
of space echoed over Johnson’s
channel, but the tapes later
proved that I actually did hear
a whispered laugh from Mey-
verik.

I faced Madison.

“They won’t come back. They
could have passed any test ex-
cept the fact that what we put
them through was only a test.
For their own reasons, they will
keep going. As far as they can.”

Madison took out his notebook
and seemed to look for vital in-
formation. Except that he never
cracked the cover.

“Of course, we can’t get them
back if they won’t come,” he
said. “If cybernetic remotes
functioned operationally at this
distance we wouldn’t have to
send men at all.”

He replaced the pocket secre-
tary and looked at me edgewise,
speculatively.

I touched his arm.

“Let’s find another bottle,” I
said.

He stepped back.

“You found them. You tested
them. You killed them.”

And the government man
walked away and left me stand-
ing with a murderer.

You see it now, don’t you.
General?

What I’m carrying around on
my back is guilt. Not guilt com-

AMAZING STORIES

plex, not guilt fixation, just
plain old Abel-Cain guilt.

In this nice, well-ordered age
I'm a killer and everybody
knows it.

You see our mistake. General.

We sent men with variable
amounts of loneliness. These
amounts could alter. But now
we have a golden opportunity.

The Evening Star is waiting
and I have found for you a man
with the true measure of loneli-
ness. It is impossible for this
man to become any more or any

less lonely. It isn’t the Ultimate
Possible Loneliness, understand
that. General.

It’s just that by himself or
with others he is always in a
crowd of three, no more, no
less.

The interstellar ship is wait-
ing.

So tell me, General, have you
ever seen a lonelier man than
me, your humble servitor. Dr.
Thorn? No, I mean it. Have
you?

THE END

“Oh, come now, Furbish — ^you’re only in there for a
few seconds at a time!”

THE

JUPITER

WEAPON

By CHARLES L. FONTENAY

T RELLA feared she was in
for trouble even before Mot-
wick’s head dropped forward on
his arms in a drunken stupor.
The two evil-looking men at the
table nearby had been watching
her surreptitiously, and now
they shifted restlessly in their
chairs.

Trella had not wanted to come
to the Golden Satellite. It was a
squalid saloon in the rougher
section of Jupiter’s View, the
terrestrial dome-colony on Gany-
mede. Motwick, already, drunk,
had insisted.

A woman could not possibly
make her way through these
streets alone to the better sec-
tion of town, especially one clad
in a sil\fery evening dress. Her
only hope was that this place
had a telephone. Perhaps she
could call one of Motwick’s
friends ; she had no one on Gany-

He was a living weapon ot
destmction — immeasareably
powerfal, utterly invulner-
able. There was only one
question: Was he human?

mede she could call a real friend
herself.

Tentatively, she pushed her
chair back from the table and
arose. She had to brush close by
the other table to get to the bar.
As she did, the dark, slick-hair-
ed man reached out and grabbed
her around the waist with a
steely arm.

Trella swung with her whole
body, and slapped him so hard
he nearly fell from his chair. As
she walked swiftly toward the
bar, he leaped up to follow her.

There were only two other
people in the Golden Satellite:
the fat, mustached bartender
and a short, square-built man at
the bar. The latter swung
around at the pistol-like report
of her slap, and she saw that,
though no more than four and a
half feet tall, he was as heavily
muscled as a lion.

His face was clean and open,
with close-cropped blond hair
and honest blue eyes. She ran to
him.

“Help me!” she cried. “Please
help me!”

He began to back away from
her.

“I can’t,” he muttered in a
deep voice. “I can’t help you. I
can’t do anything.”

The dark man was at her
heels. In desperation, she dodged
around the short man and took
refuge behind him. Her protec-
tor was obviously unwilling, but
the dark man, faced with his
massiveness, took no chances.
He stopped and shouted:

“Kregg!”

The other man at the table
arose, ponderously, and lumber-
ed toward them. He was im-
mense, at least six and a half
feet tall, with a brutal, vacant
face.

Evading her attempts to stay
behind him, the squat man be-
gan to move down the bar away
from the approaching Kregg.
The dark man moved in on
Trella again as Kregg overtook
his quarry and swung a huge'
fist like a sledgehammer.

Exactly what happened, Trella
wasn’t sure. She had the impres-
sion that Kregg’s fist connected
squarely with the short man’s
chin before he dodged to one
side in a movement so fast it
was a blur. But that couldn’t
have been, because the short
man wasn’t moved by that blow
that would have felled a steer,

and Kregg roared in pain, grab-
bing his injured fist.

“The bar!” yelled Kregg. “I
hit the damn bar!”

At this juncture, the barten-
der took a band. Leaning far
over the bar, he swung a full
bottle in a complete arc. It
smashed on Kregg’s head,
splashing the floor with liquor,
and Kregg sank stunned to his
knees. The dark man, who had
grabbed Trella’s arm, released
her and ran for the door.

Moving agilely around the end
of the bar, the bartender stood
over Kregg, holding the jagged-
edged bottleneck in his hand
menacingly.

“Get out!” rumbled the bar-
tender. “I’ll have no coppers
raiding my place for the likes of
you ! ”

Kregg stumbled to his feet
and staggered out. Trella ran to
the unconscious Motwick’s side.

“That means you, too, lady,”
said the bartender beside her.
“You and your boy friend get
out of here. You oughtn’t to
have come here in the first
place.”

“May I help you. Miss?” ask-
ed a deep, resonant voice behind
her.

She straightened from her
anxious examination of Mot-
wick. The squat man was stand-
ing there, an apologetic look on
his face.

She looked contemptuously at
the massive muscles whose help
had been denied her. Her arm
ached where the dark man had
grasped it. The broad face be-

THE JUPITER WEAPON

fore her was not unhandsome,
and the blue eyes were discon-
certingly direct, but she despised
him for a coward.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t fight
those men for you. Miss, but I
just couldn’t,” he said miserably,
as though reading her thoughts.
“But no one will bother you on
the street if I’m with you.”

“A lot of protection you’d be
if they did!” she snapped. “But
I’m desperate. You can carry
him to the Stellar Hotel for me.”

The gravity of Ganymede was
hardly more than that of Earth’s
moon, but the way the man
picked up the limp Motwick with
one hand and tossed him over a
shoulder was startling: as
though he lifted a feather pillow.
He followed Trella out the door
of the Golden Satellite and fell
in step beside her. Immediately
she was grateful for his pres-
ence. The dimly lighted street
was not crowded, but she didn’t
like the looks of the men she
saw.

The transparent dome of Jup-
iter’s View was faintly visible
in the reflected night lights of
the colonial city, but the lights
were overwhelmed by the giant,
vari-colored disc of Jupiter it-
self, riding high in the sky.

“I’m Quest Mansard, Miss,”
said her companion. “I’m just in
from Jupiter.”

“I’m Trella Nuspar,” she said,
favoring him with a green-eyed
glance. “You mean lo, don’t you
— or Moon Five?”

“No,” he said, grinning at

her. He had an engaging grin,
with even white teeth. “I meant
Jupiter.”

“You’re lying,” she said flat-
ly. “No one has ever landed on.
Jupiter. It would be impossible
to blast off again.”

“My parents landed on Jupi-
ter, and I blasted off from it,”
he said soberly. “I was born
there. Have you ever heard of
Dr. Eriklund Mansard?”

“I certainly have,” she said,
her interest taking a sudden
upward turn. “He developed the
surgiscope, didn’t he ? But his
ship was drawn into Jupiter and
lost.”

“It was drawn into Jupiter,
but he landed it successfully,”
said Quest. “He and my mother
lived on Jupiter until the oxygen
equipment wore out at last. I
was born and brought up there,
and I was finally able to build
a small rocket with a powerful
enough drive to clear the
planet.”

She looked at him. He was
short, half a head shorter than
she, but broad and powerful as
a man might be who had grown
up in heavy gravity. He trod the
street with a light, controlled
step, seeming to deliberately
hold himself down.

“If Dr. Mansard succeeded in
landing on Jupiter, why didn’t
anyone ever hear from him
again?” she demanded.

“Because,” said Quest, “his
radio was sabotaged, just as his
ship’s drive was.”

“Jupiter strength,” she mur-
mured, looking him over coolly.

AMAZING STORIES

“You wear Motwick on your
shoulder like a scarf. But you
couldn’t bring yourself to help
a woman against two thugs.”

He flushed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s
something I couldn’t help.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s not that
I’m afraid, but there’s some-
thing in me that makes me back
away from the prospect of fight-
ing anyone.”

Trella sighed. Cowardice was
a state of mind. It was peculiar-
ly inappropriate, but not unbe-
lievable, that the strongest and
most agile man on Ganymede
should be a coward. Well, she
thought with a rush of sym-
pathy, he couldn’t help being
what he was.

They had reached the more
brightly lighted section of the
city now. Trella could get a cab
from here, but the Stellar Hotel
wasn’t far. They walked on.

Trella had the desk clerk call
a cab to deliver the unconscious
Motwick to his home. She and
Quest had a late sandwich in the
coffee shop.

“I landed here only a week
ago,” he told her, his eyes frank-
ly admiring her honey-colored
hair and comely face. “I’m head-
ing for Earth on the next space-
ship.”

“We’ll be traveling compan-
ions, then,” she said. “I’m going
back on that ship, too.”

For some reason she decided
against telling him that the
assignment on which she had

come to the Jupiter system was
to gather his own father’s note-
books and take them back to
Earth.

Motwick was an irresponsible
playboy whom Trella had known
briefly on Earth, and Trella was
glad to dispense with his com-
pany for the remaining three
weeks before the spaceship
blasted off. She found herself
enjoying the steadier compan-
ionship of Quest.

As a matter of fact, she found
herself enjoying his companion-
ship more than she intended to.
She found herself falling in love
with him.

Now this did not suit her at
all. Trella had always liked her
men tall and dark. She had de-
termined that when she married
it would be to a curly-haired six-
footer.

She was not at all happy about
being so strongly attracted to a
man several inches shorter than
she. She was particularly un-
happy about feeling drawn to a
man who was a coward.

The ship that they boarded on
Moon Nine was one of the newer
ships that could attain a hun-
dred -mile -per -second velocity
and take a hyperbolic path to
Earth, but it would still require
fifty-four days to make the trip.
So Trella was delighted to find
that the ship was the Cometfire
and its skipper was her old
friend, dark-eyed, curly-haired
Jakdane Gille.

“Jakdane,” she said, flirting
with him with her eyes as in

THE JUPITER WEAPON

days gone by, “I need a chaperon
this trip, and you’re ideal for
the job.”

“I never thought of myself in
quite that light, but maybe
I’m getting old,” he answered,
laughing. “What’s your trouble,
Trella?”

“I’m in love with that huge
chunk of man who came aboard
with me, and I’m not sure I
ought to be,” she confessed. “I
may need protection against my-
self till we get to Earth.”

“If it’s to keep you out of an-
other fellow's clutches, I’m your
man,” agreed Jakdane heartily.
“I always had a mind to save
you for myself. I’ll guarantee
you won’t have a moment alone
with him the whole trip.”

“You don’t have to be that
thorough about it,” she protest-
ed hastily. “I want to get a little
enjoyment out of being in love.
But if I feel myself weakening
too much. I’ll holler for help.”

The Cometfire swung around
great Jupiter in an opening arc
and plummeted ever more swift-
ly toward the tight circles of the
inner planets. There were four
crew members and three passen-
gers aboard the ship’s tiny per-
sonnel sphere, and Trella was
thrown with Quest almost con-
stantly. She enjoyed every min-
ute of it.

She told him only that she
v/as a messenger, sent out to
Ganymede to pick up some im-
portant papers and take them
back to Earth. She was tempted
to tell him what the papers were.
Her employer had impressed up-

on her that her mission was con-
fidential, but surely Dom Bless-
sing oould not object to Dr.
Mansard’s son knowing about it.

All these things had happen-
ed before she was born, and she
did not know what Dom Bles-
sing’s relation to Dr. Mansard
had been, but it must have been
very close. She knew that Dr.
Mansard had invented the surgi-
scope.

This was an instrument with
a three-dimensional screen as its
heart. The screen was a cubical
frame in which an apparently
solid image was built up of an
object under an electron micro-
scope.

The actual cutting instrument
of the surgiscope was an ion
stream. By operating a tool in
the thx'ee-dimensional screen,
corresponding movements were
made by the ion stream on the
object under the microscope.
The principal was the same as
that used in operation of remote
control “hands” in atomic labo-
ratories to handle hot material,
and with the surgiscope very
delicate operations could be per-
formed at the cellular level.

Dr. Mansard and his wife had
disappeared into the turbulent
atmosphere of Jupiter just after
his invention of the surgiscope,
and it had been developed by
Dom Blessing. Its success had
built Spaceway Instruments, In-
corporated, which Blessing head-
ed.

Through all these years since
Dr. Mansard’s disappearance.

AMAZING STORIES

Blessing had been searching the
Jovian moons for a second, hid-
den laboratory of Dr. Mansard.
When it was found at last, he
sent Trella, his most trusted
secretary, to Ganymede to bring
back to him the notebooks found
there.

Blessing would, of course, be
happy to learn that a son of Dr.
Mansard lived, and would see
that he received his rightful
share of the inheritance. Be-
cause of this, Trella w'as tempt-
ed to tell Quest the good new's
herself; but she decided against
it. It was Blessing’s privilege to
do this his own way, and he
might not appreciate her med-
dling.

At midtrip, Trella made a rue-
ful confession to Jakdane.

“It seems I was taking unnec-
essary precautions when I asked
you to be a chaperon,” she said.
“I kept waiting for Quest to do
something, and when he didn’t
I told him I loved him.”

“What did he say?”

“It’s very peculiar,” she said
unhappily. “He said he can’t
love me. He said he wants to
love me and he feels that he
should, but there’s something in
him that refuses to permit it.”

She expected Jakdane to salve
her wounded feelings with a
sympathetic pleasantry, but he
did not. Instead, he just looked
at her very thoughtfully and
said no more about the matter.

He explained his attitude
after Asrange ran amuck.

Asrange was the third passen-

ger. He w'as a lean, saturnine
individual who said little and
kept to himself as much as pos-
sible. He was distantly polite in
his relations with both crew and
other passengers, and never
showed the slightest spark of
emotion . . . until the day Quest
squirted coffee on him.

It was one of those accidents
that can occur easily in space.
The passengers and the two
crewmen on that particular wak-
ing shift (including Jakdane)
were eating lunch on the center-
deck. Quest picked up his bulb
of coffee, but inadvertently
pressed it before he got it to his
lips. The coffee squirted all over
the front of Asrange’s clean
white tunic.

“I’m sorry!” exclaimed Quest
in distress.

The man’s eyes went wide and
he snarled. So quickly it seemed
impossible, he had unbuckled
himself from his seat and hurled
himself backward from the table
with an incoherent cry. He
seized the first object his hand
touched — it happened to be a
heavy wooden cane leaning
against Jakdane’s bunk — propel-
led himself like a projectile at
Quest.

Quest rose from the table in
a sudden uncoiling of movement.
He did not unbuckle his safety
belt — he rose and it snapped like
a string.

For a moment Trella thought
he was going to meet Asrange’s
assault. But he fled in a long
leap toward the companionway
leading to the astrogation deck

THE JUPITER WEAPON

above. Landing feet-first in the
middle of the table and rebound-
ing, Asrange pursued with the
stick upraised.

In his haste, Quest missed the
companionway in his leap and
was cornered against one of the
bunks. Asrange descended on
him like an avenging angel and,
holding onto the bunk with one
hand, rained savage blows on his
head and shoulders with the
heavy stick.

Quest made no effort to retali-
ate. He cowered under the at-
tack, holding his hands in front
of him as if to ward it off. In a
moment, Jakdane and the other
crewman had reached Asrange
and pulled him off.

When they had Asrange in
irons, Jakdane turned to Quest,
who was now sitting unhappily
at the table.

“Take it easy,” he advised.
“I'll wake the psychosurgeon
and have him look you over. J ust
stay there.”

Quest shook his head.

“Don’t bother him," he said.
“It’s nothing but a few bruises.”

“Bruises? Man, that club
could have broken your skull!
Or a couple of ribs, at the very
least.”

“I’m all right,” insisted
Quest; and when the skeptical
Jakdane insisted on examining
him carefully, he had to admit
it. There was hardly a mark on
him from the blows.

“If it didn’t hurt you any
more than that, why didn’t you
take that stick away from him ?”

demanded Jakdane. “You could
have, easily.”

“I couldn’t,” said Quest mis-
erably, and turned his face
away.

Later, alone with Trella on
the control deck, Jakdane gave
her some sober advice.

“If you think you’re in love
with Quest, forget it,” he said.

“Why? Because he’s a cow-
ard? I know that ought to make
me despise him, but it doesn’t
any more.”

“Not because he’s a coward.
Because he’s an android!”

“What? Jakdane, you can’t be
serious!”

“I am. I say he’s an android,
an artificial imitation of a man.
It all figures.

“Look, Trella, he said he was
born on Jupiter. A human could
stand the gravity of Jupiter, in-
side a dome or a ship, but what
human could stand the rocket ac-
celeration necessary to break
free of Jupiter? Here’s a man
strong enough to break a space-
ship safety belt just by getting
up out of his chair against it,
tough enough to take a beating
with a heavy stick without being
injured. How can you believe
he’s really human?”

Trella remembered the thug
Kregg striking Quest in the face
and then crying that he had in-
jured his hand on the bar.

“But he said Dr. Mansard was
his father,” protested Trella.

“Robots and androids fre-
quently look on their makers as
their parents,” said Jakdane.
“Quest may not even know he’s

AMAZING STORIES

artificial. Do you know how
Mansard died?”

“The oxygen equipment fail-
ed, Quest said.”

“Yes. Do you know when?”

“No. Quest never did tell me,
that I remember.”

“He told me; a year before
Quest made his rocket flight to
Ganymede! If the oxygen equip-
ment failed, how do you think
Quest lived in the poisonous at-
mosphere of Jupiter, if he’s hu-
man ?”

Trella was silent.

"For the protection of hu-
mans, there are two psychologi-
cal traits built into every robot
and android,” said Jakdane
gently. “The first is that they
can never, under any circum-
stances, attack a human being,
even in self defense. The second
is that, while they may under-
stand sexual desire objectively,
they can never experience it
themselves.

"Those characteristics fit your
man Quest to a T, Trella. There
is no other explanation for him :
he must be an android.”

Trella did not want to believe
Jakdane was right, but his rea-
soning was unassailable. Look-
ing upon Quest a.s an android,
many things were explained: his
great strength, his short, broad
build, his immunity to injury,
his refusal to defend himself
against a human, his inability to
return Trella’s love for him.

It was not inconceivable that
she should have unknowingly
fallen in love with an android.

Humans could love androids,
with real affection, even know-
ing that they were artificial.
There were instances of android
nursemaids who were virtually
members of the families owning
them.

She was glad now that she
had not told Quest of her mis-
sion to Ganymede. He thought
he was Dr. Mansard’s son, but
an android had no legal right of
inheritance from his owner. She
would leave it to Dom Blessing
to decide what to do about Quest.

Thus she did not, as she had
intended originally, speak to
Quest about seeing him again
after she had completed her as-
signment. Even if Jakdane was
wrong and Quest w’as human —
as now seemed unlikely — Quest
had told her he could not love
her. Her best course was to try
to forget him.

Nor did Quest try to arrange
with her for a later meeting.

“It has been pleasant knowing
you, Trella,” he said when they
left the G-boat at White Sands.
A faraway look came into his
blue eyes, and he added: “I’m
sorry things couldn’t have been
different, somehow.”

“Let’s don’t be sorry for what
we can’t help,” she said gently,
taking his hand in farewell.

Trella took a fast plane from
White Sands, and twenty-four
hours later walked up the front
steps of the familiar brownstone
house on the outskirts of Wash-
ington.

Dom Blessing himself met her
at the door, a stooped, graying

THE JUPITER WEAPON

man who peered at her over his
spectacles.

“You have the papers, eh?”
he said, spying the brief case.
“Good, good. Come in and we’ll
see what we have, eh?”

She accompanied him through
the bare, windowless anteroom
which had always seemed to her
such a strange feature of this
luxurious house, and they enter-
ed the big living room. They sat
before a fire in the old-fashioned
fireplace and Blessing opened the
brief case with trembling hands.

“There are things here,” he
said, his eyes sparkling as he
glanced through the notebooks.
“Yes, there are things here. We
shall make something of these.
Miss Trella, eh?”

“I’m glad they’re something
you can use, Mr. Blessing,” she
said. “There’s something else I
found on my trip, that I think
I should tell you about.”

She told him about Quest.

“He thinks he’s the son of Dr.
Mansard,” she finished, “but ap-
parently he is, without knowing
it, an android Dr. Mansard built
on Jupiter.”

“He came back to Earth with
you, eh?” asked Blessing intent-
ly-

“Yes. I’m afraid it’s your de-
cision whether to let him go on
living as a man or to tell him
he’s an android and claim own-
ership as Dr. Mansard’s heir.”

Trella planned to spend a few
days resting in her employer’s
spacious home, and then to take
a short vacation before resum-
ing her duties as his confidential

secretary. The next morning
when she came down from her
room, a change had been made.

Two armed men were with
Dom Blessing at breakfast and
accompanied him wherever he
went. She discovered that two
more men with guns were sta-
tioned in the bai'e anteroom and
a guard was stationed at every
entrance to the house.

“Why all the protection?” she
asked Blessing.

“A wealthy man must be care-
ful,” said Blessing cheerfully.
“When we don’t understand all
the implications of new circum-
stances, we must be prepared for
anything, eh?”

There was only one new cir-
cumstance Trella could think
of. Without actually intending
to, she exclaimed:

“You aren’t afraid of Quest?
Why, an android can’t hurt a
human !”

Blessing peered at her over his
spectacles.

“And what if he isn’t an an-
droid, eh? And if he is — what if
old Mansard didn’t build in the
prohibition against harming hu-
mans that’s required by law?
V/hat about that, eh?”

Trella was silent, shocked.
There was something here she
hadn’t known about, hadn’t even
suspected. For some reason, Dom
Blessing feared Dr. Eriklund
Mansard ... or his heir ... or
his mechanical servant.

She was sure that Blessing
was wrong, that Quest, whether
man or android, intended no

AAAAZING STORIES

harm to him. Surely, Quest
would have said something of
such bitterness during their long
time together on Ganymede and
a.space, since he did not know of
Trella’s connection with Bles-
sing. But, since this was to be
the atmosphere of Blessing’s
house, she was glad that he de-
cided to assign her to take the
Mansard papers to the New
York laboratory.

Quest came the day before she
was scheduled to leave.

Trella was in the living room
with Blessing, discussing the in-
structions she was to give to the
laboratory officials in New York.
The two bodyguards were with
them. The other guards were at
their posts.

Trella heard the doorbell ring.
The heavy oaken front door was
kept locked now, and the guards
in the anteroom examined call-
ers through a tiny window.

Suddenly alarm bells rang all
over the house. There was a ter-
rific crash outside the room as
the front door splintered. There
were shouts and the sound of a
shot.

“The steel doors!” cried Bles-
sing, turning white. “Let’s get
out of here.”

He and his bodyguards ran
through the back of the house
out of the garage.

Blessing, ahead of the rest,
leaped into one of the cars and
started the engine.

The door from the house shat-
tered and Quest burst through.
The two guards turned and fired
together.

He could be hurt by bullets.
He was staggered momentarily.

Then, in a blur of motion, he
sprang forward and swept the
guards aside with one hand with
such force that they skidded
across the floor and lay in an
unconscious heap against the
rear of the garage. Trella had
opened the door of the car, but
it was wrenched from her hand
as Blessing stepped on the accel-
erator and it leaped into the
driveway with spinning wheels.

Quest was after it, like a
chunky deer, running faster
than Trella had ever seen a man
run before.

Blessing slowed for the turn
at the end of the driveway and
glanced back over his shoulder.
Seeing Quest almost upon him,
he slammed down the accelerator
and twisted the wheel hard.

The car whipped into the
street, careened, and rolled over
and over, bringing up against a
tree on the other side in a twist-
ed tangle of wreckage.

With a horrified gasp, Trella
ran down the driveway toward
the smoking heap of metal.
Quest was already beside it,
probing it. As she reached his
side, he lifted the torn body of
Dom Blessing. Blessing was
dead.

“I’m lucky,” said Quest sober-
ly. “I would have murdered
him.”

“But why. Quest? I knew he
was afraid of you, but he didn’t
tell me why."

“It was conditioned into me,"
answered Quest. “I didn’t know

THE JUPITER WEAPON

it until just now, when it ended,
but my father conditioned me
psychologically from my birth
to the task of hunting down
Dom Blessing and killing him. It
was an unconscious drive in me
that wouldn’t release me until
the task was finished.

“You see. Blessing was my fa-
ther’s a.ssistant on Ganymede.
Right after my father completed
development of the surgiscope,
he and my mother blasted off for
lo. Blessing wanted the valuable
rights to the surgiscope, and he
sabotaged the ship’s drive so it
would fall into Jupiter.

"But my father was able to
control it in the heavy atmos-
phere of Jupiter, and landed it
successfully. I was born there,
and he conditioned me to come
to Earth and track down Bles-
sing. I know now that it was
part of the conditioning that I
was unable to fight any other
man until my task was finished :
it might have gotten me in trou-
ble and diverted me from that
purpose.”

More gently than Trella would
have believed possible for his
Jupiter-strong muscles. Quest
took her in his arms.

“Now I can say I love you,”
he said. “That was part of the
conditioning too: I couldn’t love
any woman until my job was
done.”

Trella disengaged herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t
you know this, too, now: that
you’re not a man, but an an-
droid?”

He looked at her in astonish-

ment, stunned by her words.

"What in space makes you
think that?” he demanded.

“Why, Quest, it’s obvious,”
she cried, tears in her eyes.
“Everything about you . . . your
build, suited for Jupiter’s grav-
ity . . . your strength . . . the
fact that you were able to live
in Jupiter’s atmosphere after
the oxygen equipment failed.
I know you think Dr. Mansard
was your father, but androids
often believe that.”

He grinned at her.

“I’m no android,” he said con-
fidently. “Do you forget my fa-
ther was inventor of the surgi-
scope? He knew I’d have to grow
up on Jupiter, and he operated
on the genes before I was born.
He altered my inherited charac-
teristics to adapt me to the cli-
mate of Jupiter . . . even to
being able to breathe a chlorine
atmosphere as well as an oxygen
atmosphere.”

Trella looked at him. He was
not badly hurt, any more than
an elephant would have been,
but his tunic was stained with
red blood where the bullets had
struck him. Normal android
blood was green.

“How can you be sure?” she
asked doubtfully.

“Androids are made,” he an-
swered with a laugh. “They
don’t grow up. And I remember
my boyhood on Jupiter very
well.”

He took her in his arms again,
and this time she did not resist.
His lips were very human.

THE CHO

AMAZING STORIES

QUESTION
OF COMFORT

By LES COLLINS

M y job, finished now, had
been getting them to Dis-
neyland. The problem was bring-
ing one in p-articular — one I had
to find. The timing was uncom-
fortably close.

Td taken the last of the yel-
low pills yesterday, tossing the
bottle away with a sort of indif-
ferent frustration. I won or lost
on the validity of my logic — and
whether I'd built a better
mousetrap.

The pills had given me 24
hours before the fatal weakness
took hold ; nevertheless, I waited
as long as I could. That left me
less than an hour, now ; strange-
ly, as I walked in the eerie dark-
ness of an early morning, virtu-
ally deserted Disneyland, I felt
calm. And yet, my life depended
on the one I sought being inside
the Tour building.

I was seeking a monster of

The Gravity Gang was a group
of geniuses — devoting its bril-
lianee to creating a realistic
Solar System for Disneyland.
That was the story, anyway.
No one would have believed all
that stuff about cops and rob-
bers from outer space.

terrible potential, yet so innoc-
uous looking that he’d not stand
out. I couldn’t produce him,
couldn’t say where in the world
he was. Nevertheless he was the
basis, the motivation second
only to mine. I took the long,
hard way — three years — making
him come to me.

Two years were devoted to ac-
climitization, learning, and then
swinging this job: just to put
the idea across.

Assigned to Disneyland Pub-
lic Relations in the offices at
Burbank, I’d begun with the
usual low-pay, low-level jobs. I
didn’t, couldn’t mind; at least
I had a foot in the right door.
Within six months, I reached a
point where I could present the
idea.

It had enough merit. My boss
— 35 years’ experience enabled
him to recognize a good idea — ■

took it to his boss who took it to
The Boss.

Tomorrowland is the orphan
division of Disneyland, thrown
in as sop to those interested
more in the future than the
past. My idea was to sex up To-
morrowland : Tour the Solar
System.

Not really, but we’d bill it
that way. The Tour of the Solar
System Building was to be
large. Its rooms would reproduce
environments of parts of the
System, as best we knew them.

I’ll never forget the first
planning session when we real-
ists were underdogs, yet swung
the basic direction. By then, the
Hollywood Mind had appeared.
The Hollywood Mind is definite-
ly a real thing, a vicious thing,
a blank thing, that paternalisti-
cally insists It knows what the
public wants.

There was general agreement
on broad outlines. Trouble began
over Venus.

“Of course,’’ said one of the
Minds, “we’ll easily create a
swampy environment — ’’

I burst out with quiet desper-
ation: “May I comment?’’

The realists were churning.
Right there, sides were being
chosen. I let all know my side
immediately.

“Venus is hot, but it’s desert
heat. Continuous dust storms
with fantastic winds — ’’

“People’d never go for that
junk,” interrupted the Mind.
“Everyone knows Venus is
swampy.”

“Everyone whose reading
tastes matured no further than
Edgar Rice Burroughs!”

The mind, with a if-you-know-
so-much— why-aintcha-rich look,
sneered, “How come you know
all about it?”

Speechless, I spread my
hands. This joker was leading
with his chin, forcing the fight.
I had to hit him again ; if I lost,
I lost good. “A person,” I said
slowly and rhythmically, “with
normal intelligence and a mi-
nute interest in the universe, will
keep step with the major sci-
ences, at least on an elementary
level. I must stress the qualifica-
tion of nonnal intelligence.”

The Mind, face contorted, was
determined to get me. I was in a
very vulnerable spot; more im-
portant, so was the idea.

Mind began an emotional ti-
rade, and mentally I damned
him. It couldn’t have mattered
to him what environment we
used, but he was politicking
where he shouldn’t.

There was silence when he
stopped. This was the crux; The
Boss would decide. I held my
breath.

He said, “We’ll make it hot
and dusty.” The realists had
won; the rest climbed on the
bandwagon but quick; and the
temple was cleansed.

It was natural — because at
the moment I was fair-haired —
for the project to become mine.
God knows, I worked hard for
it. I’d have to watch the Mind,
though; he would make things
as difficult as possible.

AA\AZING STORIES

However, he’d proved he was
the one person I wasn't seeking.
One down and 2,499,999,999 to
go.

Within a few days, a new op-
position coalition formed, head-
ed by the Mind. Fortunately,
they helped. I’d hesitated on one
last point. Pushed, I gambled
the momentum of the initial en-
thusiasm would carry it.

Originally the plan was a
series of rooms, glassed off, that
people could stare into. There
was something much better ; en-
gineering and I spent 36 hours
straight, figuring costs, jug-
gling space and equipment, until
the modification didn’t look too
expensive — juggling is always
possible in technical proposals.
For the results, the cost was
worth it. I hand-carried the
proposal in.

Why not take people through
the rooms? We could even de-
sign a simulated, usable space-
suit. There’d be airlock doors
between the rooms for effective-
ness, insulation, economy. No
children under ten allowed; no
adults over 50. They’d go
through in groups of 10 or 11.

Sure, I realized this was the
most elaborate, most ambitious
concession ever planned. The
greatest ever attempted in its
line, it would cost — both us and
the public. But people will pay
for value. They’d go for a buck-
and-a-balf or even two ; the lines
of those filing past the windows,
at 50 cents a crack, would also
bring in the dough.

QUESTION OF COMFORT

They bought it. Not all — they
nixed my idea of creating exact
environmental conditions; and I
didn’t insist, luck and Holly-
wood being what they are.

From the first, I established a
special group to work on one
problem. They were dubbed the
Gravity Gang, and immediately
after, the GG. I hired them for
the gravity of the situation, a
standard gag that, once uttered,
became as trite as the phrase.
The Tour’s I’ealism would be
affected by normal weight sen-
sations.

The team consisted of a fe-
male set designer — who’d turn
any male head — from the Stu-
dio, a garage mechanic with 30
years’ experience, an electronics
engineer, a science fiction writ-
er, and the prettiest competent
secretary available. I found
Hazel, discovering with delight
she’d had three years of anthro-
pology at UCLA.

As soon as they assembled, I
explained their job: find a way
to give the illusion of lessened
gravity.

Working conditions would be
the best possible — why I’d want-
ed the women pretty — and their
time was their own. I found the
GG responded by working 10
hours a day and thinking an-
other 14. They were that sort.

I couldn’t know the GG was
foredoomed to failure by its
very collective nature ; nor could
I know, by its nature, the GG
meant the difference between
my success and failure.

The opposition put one over ;

we’d started referring to the
job as Tour of the System Proj-
ect. Next day, it was going the
rounds as TS project. Words,
words, and men will always fight
with words.

Actually, the initials were
worthy of the name. The engi-
neei’ing problems mounted like
crazy. Words, words, and one of
them got to the outside world.
Or maybe it was the additional
construction crew we hired.

One logical spot for the build-
ing was next to the moon flight.
The Tour building now would be
bigger than first planned, so we
extended it southeasterly. This
meant changing the roadbed of
the Sante Fe & Disneyland R.R.
It put me up to my ears in plane
surveying — and gave me a nasty
shock.

I looked up at someone’s
shout, in time to see a ton of cat
rolling down the embankment at
me.

What we were doing was
easy. Using a spiral to transi-
tion gradually from tangent to
circular curve and from circular
curve to tangent. Easy? Yeah.
Sure.

If this was my baby, I’d
damned well better know its
personality traits. I was out
with the surveyors, I was out
with the construction gang, I
was out at the wrong time.

As the yellow beast, mindless
servant of man, thundered
down, I dove for the rocks.
Thank God for the rocks — we’d
had to import them : the soil in

Orange County is fine for
oranges, but too soft for train
roadbeds.

Choking on the dust, I rolled
over. The cat perched, grinning
drunkenly, on the rocks. The op-
position or an accident? Surely
the Mind wasn’t that desperate.
But I was; I had to keep the
idea alive, for myself as well as
completion of the original mis-
sion.

Several million hands pulled
me out; several million more
patted away the dust. Motion-
less, I’d just seen the driver of
the cat. Seen him — and was
sorry.

He stood tall but hunched
over ; gaunt, with pasty skin,
vapid eyes, and a kind of yellow-
nondescript hair.

It wasn’t the physical charac-
teristics, very similar to mine,
that bothered me — once after an
incomplete pass, I’d been told by
a young lady that I was a “thin,
sallow lecher.’’ I was swept by
waves of impending trouble,
more frightened of him than of
the opposition in toto. Then, re-
lieved, I realized the man wasn’t
the one I was expecting.

Back in my office, I wasn’t al-
lowed the luxury of nervous re-
action. Our spacesuit man want-
ed an Ok on design changes.
Changes? What changes? . . .
Oh, yes, go ahead.

A materials man wanted to
know about weight. I told him
where to go — for the informa-
tion.

A written progress report
from the GG briefly, sardonical-

A^^AZING STORIES

ly, said: “All the talk about in-
creased costs and lowered bud-
get has decided us to ask if any
aircraft, missile, or AEC groups
have come up with anti-gravity.
It’d be a lot simpler that way.
Love and kisses.”

I shrugged, wrote them a
memo to take a week off for
fishing, wenching, or reading
Van Es on the Pleistocene stra-
tigraphy of Java. I didn’t care,
as long as they returned with a
fresh point of view.

Things were hectic already,
less than four months after we’d
started. And we hadn’t much to
show, except a shift in the road-
bed of the SF & D RR. The op-
position, growing stronger each
day, could sit back and rest the
case, with nothing more than a
smug, needling, I-told-you-so
look.

The day finally came when we
broke ground for the building.
It was quite an achievement,
and I invited the GG to dinner.
I’d been drawn to the bunch of
screwballs — the only name pos-
sible — more and more. Maybe
because they were my brain-
child, or maybe because lately
they were the only human com-
pany in which I could relax.

The Hotel is about a half-mile
south of Disneyland. I arrived
early, hoping to grab a ginger
ale. Our set designer, Frank —
christened Francis — caught me
at the door.

“Wanted to buy you a drink.
This is the first time we’ve met
socially.”

That was true ; it was equally

true something bothered her.
Damn it I Trapped, I’d have to
drink. We ordered, and I mulled
it over. Waited, but she said
nothing.

The drinks came. I shook sev-
eral little, bright-yellow pills
from the bottle, swallowed them,
then drank. Frank cocked her
head inquisitively.

“If you must know, they’re
for my ulcer.”

“Didn’t know you had one.”

“Don’t, but I’ll probably get
one, any day.”

She laughed, and I drank
again. I should do my drinking
alone because I get boiled incred-
ibly fast. It happened now. One
second I was sober; the next,
drunk.

Resting a cheek on a wobbly
palm-and-elbow, I said, “Has
everyone ever said you are the
most beautiful — ”

“Yes, but in your present
state, it isn’t a good idea for you
to add to that number.”

I shifted to the other forearm.
“Frank, things might be differ-
ent if I weren’t a thin, sallow
lecher.”

“What a nice compliment — "

“Uh huh.”

“Especially since I work for
you, nominally anyway — ”

“Uh huh, nominally.”

“Bosses should not make
passes

At gals who work as lower
classes.”

“Uh, huh, familiar.”

“But you are, and getting
more so daily — ”

QUESTION OF COMFORT

“Uh hu — are what?” I asked
in surprise.

“Thin, tired: the GG has de-
cided you’re working too hard.”

“Because I don’t use Vano.” I
grinned, having waited long to
put that one across.

“Be serious and listen — ”

“You listen: if I’m working
too hard, it’s to finish. I must,
and soon.”

“This compulsion,” she paced
her words, “will kill you if you
let it.”

‘Tt’ll kill me if I don’t let
it—”

“Here comes Harry.”

It was time. Blearily, I fum-
bled with the pills, spilled the
bottle. Frank helped me gather
them up, as Harry arrived.

He said, a look of worry on
his gaunt, gray features, “The
rest of us are waiting.”

Concerned, Frank asked,
“Think you’re able?”

“Anytime you say,” I answer-
ed, in a cold-sober monotone.

She flushed, knowing I was
sober, not knowing certainly if
I were serious.

When we were seated, I said
enthusiastically, “Chateaubriand
tonight, gangsters.”

The GG did not react as ex-
pected.

Dex, the electronics engineer,
said quietly, “If it's steak when
the ground is broken, what’ll it
be when the thing is finished?”

“A feast, for all the animals
in the world — just like Sulei-
man-bin-Daoud.” This, from the
GG writer, Mel.

Their faces showed the same
thing that bothered Frank.

Harry said, “We have some-
thing to do.”

“Well, do it!” I tried weak
joviality: “It can’t be anything
of earth-shaking gravity.”

Hazel, long since accepted as
a GG member, replied, “It’s just
that we’re . . . resigned.”

“What?”

“We’ve produced nothing in
months of sustained eifort.
That’s why we’re resigning,”
Dex replied disgustedly.

Frank touched my arm, said
softly, “We’ve examined every
angle. With the money available,
it’s just impossible to give a
sensation of changed weight.
And we know they’ve been pres-
suring you about us being on
the payroll.”

“Wait” — desperately — “if you
pull out, everything will go. 'The
opposition needs only something
like this. Besides, the GG is the
one bit of insanity I can depend
on in a practical world, the prop
for my judgment — ”

Harry: “Clouded judgment.”

Mel : “Expensive prop.”

Having grown used to their
friendly insults, I sensed their
resolution weakening, felt the
pendulum swinging back.

The waitress interrupted with
news of an urgent phone call. It
was the worst possible time for
me to leave. And the news I got
threw me. Feeling the weight of
the world, I returned.

“Can’t be in two places at
once,” I said bitterly. “Gk) ahead
without me; I’m leaving.”

AMAZING STORIES

“Wait a few minutes,” Mel
said, between bites of steak, “we
want to resign. Sit down.”

“Damn it, I can’t! I spoke to
The Boss. I’ve pulled a boo-boo,
but big.”

“What happened?”

“Bonestell will do the back-
grounds, but he has to know
what rocks we’re putting in the
rooms. What rocks are we?
Anybody have an idea what the
surface of Mars looks like? God,
how could I have missed that?”

“Sit down,” Dex said casually,
“we want to resign.”

Hazel added, “You can have
your rocks in 24 hours. We
worked it out weeks ago. I did
read Van Es, and Harry has
prospected, and Dex knows min-
erals, and Mel pushed his way
through Tyrrell’s ‘Principles of
Petrology’ ” —

“The science of rocks,” Mel
interrupted, between bites of
steak.

“We got interested one day.”
Frank’s pretty, dark eyes
danced.

“We want to resign,” Dex re-
peated casually, “so sit down.”

I sat.

They began throwing the ball
faster than I could catch: “No
atmosphere on Mercury, then no
oxidation; I insist there’d be no
straight metals . . . The aster-
oids? Ferromagnesian blocks of
some kind — any basalts around
here? . . . For Venus, grab a
truckload of granodiorite — the
spotted stuff — from the Sierra-
Nevadas and tint it pink . . .
Lateritic soils for Mars? You

crazy? Must have water and a
subtropical climate . .

It hit me : a valid use for the
GG, one that already saved mon-
ey. Make them a brain team,
trouble-shooters, or problem-
solvers on questions that could
not be solved.

I said, “Fine, go ahead. About
your resignations — ”

Mel said something indistin-
guishable — I’d caught him on a
bite of steak.

Hazel, belligerent, demanded:
“Are you asking us to resign?”

Apparently I wasn’t. So they
stuck, and another crisis was
met. Unfortunately, by then, I’d
forgotten the shock and warn-
ing I got from the cat.

Things moved swiftly, more
easily. The GG took over, be-
coming, in effect, my staff.
They’d become more : five differ-
ent extensions of me, each Capa-
ble of acting correctly. As a
team, they meshed beautifully.

Too beautifully, at one point.
Dex and Hazel were seeing eye-
to-eye, even in the dark, and I
worried about the effect on the
others. I might as well have
worried about the effect of a
light bulb on the sun. They mar-
ried or some such, refused time
off, and the GG functioned, if
anything, better. It was almost
indecent the way the five got
along together.

A new problem arose: tem-
perature. We weren’t reproduc-
ing actual temperatures, but the
rooms needed a marked change,
for reality’s sake. I’d insisted

QUESTION OF COMFORT

on that, and having won the
iwint, was stuck with it. It was
after 2 A.M. ; I was alone in the
office.

The sound of the outer door
closing startled me. Footsteps
approached; I hurried to clean
my desk, sweeping the bottle
into the drawer.

“You’re up too late. Go home.”
Frank had a nonarguable look
in her eye. “You’re supposed to
be getting sleep.”

“I am, far more than before
you guys began helping, but — ”

“But with all that extra sleep,
you’re looking worse.”

“I don’t need any more sleep!”
I said angrily, then tried diver-
sion, “Been on a date?”

“Yes, but I thought I’d better
check on you.” She moved close
to the desk, and I remembered
the last time we’d been alone,
in the bar. Now I was glad I
wasn’t drunk.

“What the devil are you up
to?”

She pawed through the desk
drawers. “Finding what you
tried to hide — ”

“Wait, Frank!” I yelled, too
late.

“She looked at the bottle, then
me, with a strange expression:
a little pity — not patronizing —
but mostly feminine understand-
ing. “Soda pop? Of course. You
don’t like alcohol, do you?”

“No.” Gruffiy.

Her eyes blinked rapidly, as
though holding back tears. “I
know what’s the matter with
you; I really know.”

‘There’s nothing the matter
with me that — ”

“That beating this mess won't
solve.” We hadn’t heard Mel
enter. He leaned casually
against the door. “Terrific idea
for a story.”

I shrugged. “Seems to be
homecoming night.”

“Not quite,” he glanced at his
watch, “but wait another few
minutes.”

He was right: Harry, out of
breath, was the last of the GG
to arrive.

“Now what?” I asked. “Sure-
ly this meeting isn’t an acci-
dent?”

Dex said thoughtfully, “No,
not really, but it is in the sense
you mean. We didn’t agree to
appear tonight. Yet logically,
it’s time for the temperature
problem — well, I guess each of
us came down to help.”

What could I do? That was
the GG, characteristically, so we
talked temperatures.

“What I was thinking,” Harry
began slowly, “was a sort of
superthermostat.” Harry, as
usual, came to the right starting
point.

Frank smiled, “That’s right,
especially considering layout.
Venus and Mercury are hot; the
others, cold. What about a con-
trol console that’ll light when
the rooms get outside normal
temperature range? Then the
operator —

“Hey! Why an operator?"
Mel questioned. “We ought to
make this automatic.” He grin-
ned. “Giant computer . . . can

AMAZING STORIES

see it now; the brain conies
alive, tries to destroy anyone
turning it off — ”

I asked: “Have you been
reading the stuff you write?”
Funny enough for 3 A.M.

Dex said calmly, “We can
work this — in fact, we can tie it
in pink ribbons and forget it.
An electronics outfit in Pasadena
makes an automatic scanning
and logging system. Works off
punched-paper tape. We’ll code
the right poop, and the system
will compare it with the actual
raw data. Feedback will be to a
master control servo that’ll ac-
tivate the heater or cooler. Now,
we need the right pickup — ”

I snapped my fingers. “Varia-
ble resistor bridge. Couple of
resistors equal at the right tem-
perature. There’ll be a frequency
change with changing tempera-
ture — better than a thermocou-
ple, I think.”

They looked at me as though
I were butting in.

“You’ve been reading, too,”
Dex accused. “Ok, we’ll use a
temperature bulb. Trouble is,
with this system, we’d better
let it run continuously. That’ll
drive costs up.”

Hazel asked, “Can’t we use
the heat, maybe to drive a com-
pressor? The sudden expansion
of air could cool the rest.
Harry?”

Harry hadn’t time to answer.

“What’ll this cost?” I snap-
ped.

“Roughly, 15 to 18 thousand,”
Dex replied.

"What?”

With fine impartiality, they
ignored me completely. Harry
continued, as though without
interruption, “Ye-es, I guess a
compressor-and-coolant system
could be arranged . .

We broke up at 6 A.M. I took
one of my pills, frowning at the
bottle. Seemed to be emptying
fast. Sleepily, I shook the
thought off and faced the new
day — little knowing the opposi-
tion had managed to skizzle us
again.

The last displays were moons
of Jupiter and Saturn; it was
impossible to recreate tortured
conditions of the planets them-
selves. Saturn’s closest moon,
Mimas, was picked.

Our grand finale; landing on
Mimas with Saturn rising spec-
tacularly out of the east. Mimas
is in the plane of the rings, so
they couldn’t be obvious. We’d
show enough, however, to make
it damned impressive, and ex-
plain it by libration of the
satellite.

The mechanics of realistically
moving Saturn was rougher
than a cob. And that's where the
opposition fixed us. They claim-
ed there wasn’t enough drama
in the tour. Let it end with a
flash of light, a roar, and a
meteor striking nearby.

The roar came from us.
Mimas had no atmosphere — how
could the meteor sound off or
burn up? We finally compro-
mised, permitting the meteor to
hit.

We’d decided early the cus-

QUESTION OF COMFORT

tomers couldn't walk throug'h.
Mel first, Harry, then Dex, to-
gether produced an electric-
powered, open runabout. The
cart ran on treads in contact
with skillfully hidden tracks,
for the current channel. A fu-
turistic touch, that — ^we’d say
the cart ran on broadcast power.

The power source provided
cart headlights, and made bat-
teries unnecessary for the
guide's walkie-talkie and the
customers’ helmet receivers.

Mimas’ last section of track
was on a vibrating platform.
The cart tripped a switch ; when
the meteor supposedly hit, the
platform would drop and rise
three inches, fast, twisting
while it did — “enough,” Mel
said grimly, “to shake the damn-
ed kishkas out of ’em!”

We cracked that one, just in
time for another. It began with
Venus, as most of my problems
had. We planned constant dust
storms for Venus. Real quick,
there’d be nothing left of the
Bonestell’s backgrounds but a
blank wall, from mechanical
erosion.

And how did we intend — ?

Glass —

Too easily scratched. Lord,
another one: how will the half-
a-buck customers be able to see
inside?

Glass and one of those silicon
plastics ?

Better, but —

Harry beat it: glass, plastic,
and a boundary layer of cold air,
jetted down from the ceiling, in
front of the background paint-

ing and back of the look-in win-
dow. I was glad, for lately,
Harry had begun to age. Thin
and gray, he showed the strain
— as did all of us.

We were sitting in an admin-
istration office at the park. I
now recognized the symptoms;
when the GG had no real prob-
lems, its collective mind usually
turned to my health. I wouldn’t
admit it, but I felt a little peak-
ed. Little? Hell, bone-tired, dog-
weary pooped. Seemed every
motion was effort, but soon it
would end.

The phone rang. With the
message, it was ended.

“Let’s go, grouseketeers.”

There was almost a pregnant
pause. Six months: conception
of the idea to delivery of finish-
ed product; six months, work-
ing together, fighting men, na-
ture, and the perversity of in-
animate objects — all of this now
was done.

No one moved; Frank verbal-
ized it: “I’m scared.” She
sounded scared.

“Better than being petrified,
which I am,” I answered. “But
we might as well face it.”

We dragged over to the TS
building, an impressive struc-
ture.

The guide played it straight,
told us exactly how to suit up.
Then, in the cart, we edged into
the tunnel that was the first
lock, and — warned to set our fil-
ters — emerged onto the blinding
surface of Mercury.

We felt the heat momentarily

AMAZING STORIES

— Mercury and Venus were kept
at a constant 140 F, the others
at 0 F — but it was a deliberate
thrill. Then cool air from the
cart suit-connections began cir-
culating.

Bonestell was magnificent, as
always. Yellow landscape, spat-
ter cones, glittering streaks that
might be metal in the volcanic
ground — created by dusting
ground mica on wet glue to
catch the reflection of the sun.
It was a masterpiece.

The sun. Black sky holding a
giant, blazing ball. Too damned
yellow, but filtered carbon arcs
were the best we could do.

Down, into the tunnel that
was lock two. This next one . . .
Venus, obvious opposition point
of attack, where we’d had the
most trouble: Venus had to be
right.

It was ! A blast of wind struck
us, and dust, swirling every-
where. We’d discovered there’s
no such thing as a sand storm —
it’s really dust — so we’d taken
pains making things look right.
Sand dunes were carefully ce-
mented in place; dust rippling
over gave the proper illusion.

Oddly shaped rocks, dimly
seen, strengthened the impres-
sion of wind-abraded topogra-
phy. Rocks were reddish, over-
lain by smears of bright yellow.
Lot of trouble placing all that
flowers of sulfur, but we postu-
lated a liquid sulfur-sulfur diox-
ide-carbon dioxide cycle.

Overhead, a diffused, intense
yellow light. The sun — we were
on the daylight side.

I sighed, relaxed, knowing
this one had worked out.

We gave the moon little time.
For those who had become
homesick. Earth was hanging
magnificently in the sky. At a
crater wall, we stopped, ostensi-
bly to let souvenir hunters pick
at small pieces of lunar rock
without leaving the cart.

We’d argued hours on what
type to use, till Mel dragged out
his rock book. M-est, automati-
cally, had wanted basalt. How-
ever, the moon’s density being
low, heavier rocks are probably
scarce — one good reason not to
expect radioactive ores there.
We finally settled for rhyolite
and obsidian.

Stopping on the moon had an-
other purpose. We kept the room
temperature at 70 F, for heat-
ing and cooling economy; the
transition from Venus to Mars
was much simpler if ambient
temperature dropped from 140
to 70 and from 70 to 0, rather
than straight through the range.

Next, a Martian polar cap,
and we looked down a long canal
that disappeared on the horizon.
Water appeared to run uphill
for that effect. The whole scene
looked like an Arizona highway
at dusk — ^what it should have.
To our right, a suggestion of —
damn the opposition’s eyes —
culture: a large stone whatzit
It was a jarring note.

We selected one of those non-
descript asteroids with just
enough diameter to show ex-
treme curvature. Frank had

QUESTION OF COMFORT

done magnificently. I found my-
self hanging onto the cart.
Headlights deliberately dimmed,
on the rocky surface, the cart
bumped wildly. The sky was
black, broken only by little, hard
chunks of light. No horizon. The
feeling of being ready to‘ drop
was intense, possibly too much
so.

Europa, then, in a valley of
ice. We'd picked Jupiter’s third
moon because its frozen atmos-
phere permitted some eerie
pseudo-ice sculpturing. As we
moved, Jupiter appeared be-
tween breaks and peaks in the
sheer wall. Worked nicely, see-
ing the monstrous planet dis-
tended overhead, like a gaily
colored beach ball moving with
us, as the moon from a train
window. Unfortunately, the ice
forms detracted somewhat.

Mimas, pitch black, then a
glow. Stark landscape quickly
becoming visible. Steep cliffs,
rocky plain. Saturn rising. The
rings, their shadow on the globe,
the beauty of it, made me sit
stunned, though I knew what to
expect.

The guide warned us radar
spotted an approaching object,
probably a meteor. We ran, the
cart at maximum speed — not
much, really. It tore at you,
wanting to stare at Saturn,
wanting to duck.

Hit the special section, drop-
ped and rose our three inches —
one hell of a distance — and the
tour was over. I kept thinking,
insanely, that the meteor was a
perfect conflict touch.

We unsuited silently. Finally,
Hazel breathed, “Hallelujah!” It
was summation of success. There
now remained but one thing:
wait for the quarry to shov/.

I estimated the necessary
time at four days and nights
after opening. It was hard to
wait, hard not to fidget under
the watchful — the only word —
eyes of the GG. They were up
to something, undoubtedly. But
there was something far more
important: I’d narrowed the
2,499,999,999 down to five.

The one I sought was a mem-
ber of the GG.

Opening night brought Harry
and Frank to my office. They
tried to be casual, engaged me
in desultory nothings. Frank
looked reproachful — I was there
too late.

The following night, Mel am-
bled in at midnight. He grinned,
discussed a plot, suggested we
go out for a beer, changed his
mind, left.

The third night, I waited in
the dark. Nor was I disappoint-
ed : Dex and Hazel showed.

“What do you want? It’s 2
A.M.!’’

There was a long regrouping
pause; then Hazel said, “Dex
has a fine idea.”

“Well?”

“I’ve been thinking about
gravity — ”

“About time,” I said sarcasti-
cally, disliking myself but hop-
ing it would get rid of them,
“we opened three days ago.”

He ignored my petulence and

A/AAZING STORIES

grinned. “No, I meant anti-
gravity. I think it's possible. If
you had a superconductor in an
inductance field — ”

“Why tell me?”

“Thought you’d have some
ideas.”

I shook my head. “That’s
what I hired you for. My only
idea right now is going to
sleep.”

Bewildered, they left.

And on the fourth night, no
one came. So I headed for the
Tour. Now, having risked every-
thing on my logic, I v/as a dead
pigeon if wrong. There were
only minutes left.

I eased through the back door,
heard our automation equipment
humming. Despite darkness, I
shortcutted, nearly reaching the
door to the service hallway in
back of the planetary rooms.
There was a distinct click, and a
flashlight blinded me. I waited,
stifling a cry, knowing if it
were he, death was next.

Death never spoke in such
quiet, sv/eet tones. Frank asked,
“What are you doing here?”

Frank, Frank, not you!

Surprise shocked me : the
light, her voice, the sudden sus-
picion. Still, diversion and coun-
terattack . . . “Perhaps you’ve
the explaining to do,” I said
nastily. “Why are you here?”

Her wide-eyed ingenuousness
making me more suspicious, she
answered, “Waiting to see if
you’d appear.” Then she stopped
being truthful: “You forget we
had a date — ”

“We didn’t have any damned

date,” I said flatly, hurting deep
within.

“All right, I want to know
why you’re still driving your-
selfi It isn’t work; that’s finish-
ed.”

The way she talked made me
hopeful. Maybe she wasn’t the
one . . . and then came fear.
Frank, if he’s here, you’re in
danger. The monster respects
nothing we hold dear — law,
property, dignity, life.

There was one way to find
out: make her leave. I wrenched
the flashlight from her, smashed
it on the concrete floor. “I mean
this: get the hell out of here,
and stay out!”

She said, distastefully, “I’ve
seen it happen, but never this
fast. You’ve gone Hollywood,
you’re a genius, you’re tremen-
dous — forgetting other people
who helped. Go ahead with your
mysterious deal— and I hope we
never meet again.”

I struggled with ambivalence.
This might be a trick; if not,
Frank now hated me irrepara-
bly.

No time to worry about hu-
man emotions, not any more.
Nausea reminded me of the pri-
mary purpose. I continued dowm
the dark hallway, listening for
Frank’s return, hoping she
needn’t die.

Light was unnecessary: I
knew the right door. Because it
started here, it would end here.
Quickly, silently, I slipped inside
the Venus room. With peculiar
relief, I realized Frank wasn’t

QUESTION OF CO.MFORT

it: my nose led me rijjht to the
monster.

In an ecstatic, semistuperous
state, smelling strongly of sul-
fur dioxide, he couldn’t have
been aware of me. Couldn’t?

“It took you long enough.’’ He
didn’t bother to turn from the
rock he was huddled against.

“I had to be sure.” I felt any-
thing but the calm carried in my
voice. “No wonder the GG got
the right answers, with you
making initial starts. Say, were
you responsible for the cat that
rolled at me?”

“An accident. Obviously, I
wanted this room built as much
as you.” Harry, now undis-
guised, languorously turned.
“Your little trap didn’t quite
come off — a danger in fighting
a superior intellect.”

“No trap. I had a job to do;
it’s done.”

“Job? Job?” Infuriated, leap-
ing to his feet, he shouted,
“Speak the native tongue, filth!”

“What’s the use? Because of
you. I'll never again have the
chance. And you no longer have
a native tongue.”

“Who were those judges,” he
asked bitterly, “to declare me an
outcast ?”

“Representatives of an out-
raged society.” I almost lost my
temper, thinking of this devi-
ant’s crimes. “You were lucky to
get banishment instead of
death.”

He grinned. “So were you.”

“True. I tried to find the
proper place, where you’d have
some chance.”

He laughed openly. “I fixed
the ship nicely.”

“You don’t understand at
all—”

“I counted on your being a
hero, trying to save us. So, I
escaped.”

“For three years only.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of us won’t leave here.”

Harry frowned, then tried
cunning. “Aren’t you being
silly? We are hopelessly maroon-
ed. Surely there are overriding
considerations to your childish
devotion to duty.”

I shook my head. “This is too
small a room for us. Even if I
trusted you, I couldn’t allow you
at this naive young world.”

Voices suddenly approached.
“The GG?” Harry questioned.

“Didn’t know they were com-
ing.” Desperately, I looked
about, found an eroded mass.
“Hide there ; I’ll get rid of
them.”

“You’d better — we have busi-
ness.” Possibly it was the only
time I’ve agreed with him. Mel
and Dex came in. I called, “Over
here!”

Dex snapped his fingers.
“Knew it was Venus.”

Mel wrinkled his nose. “Sul-
fur dioxide, too, like we figured.
Soda pop, when I broke into
that tender scene between you
and Frank — that gave you nec-
essary carbon dioxide, right, am
I not?”

“Yes . . . Why don’t you guys
leave me alone?” Beginning to
falter in the heat, they dripped

AMAZING STORIES

perspiration. “You could die in
this chilly climate.”

Dex said, “Listen for a sec-
ond. We don’t have to break up.
Let’s form a service organiza-
tion, ‘Problems, Inc.’ or some
equally stupid title. Very soon
we could afford a private bed-
room, like this, for you to stay
in all the time — ”

“Need only two or three
nights in ten.” Harry was mov-
ing restlessly. He wouldn’t wait
much longer. “Combination of
oxygen, carbon dioxide, and
sulfur under relatively high
temperature is how I eat. Pills
can substitute, but not for pro-
tracted periods. That’s why I
had to build this room. Couple
of weeks, and I’ll be in the pink ;
as pink as you, anyway.”

Abruptly, I lay down, ignor-
ing them. I had to make my
friends go. Harry could literally
have shredded them. Footsteps;
the door closed; relief and lone-
liness joined me, but only for a
moment.

His voice sliced the darkness :
“I’m a man of honor, and must
warn you. If we fight, you’ll
lose. I escaped with far more
pills than you ; .you’re weaker.”

I said sardonically, “With you
stealing parts of my supply,
that’s probably the only truthful
thing you’ve said!”

“I’ve been in here three
nights, adjusting my metabo-
lism . . .”

He came at me then, not
breaking his flow of speech. At
home, I’d have been surprised at
the dishonor. Instead, I was ex-

pecting it. He ran into my ball-
ed fist.

If we’d been home ... if, if,
if, if, if. At full strength, I
could have broken his neck with
the blow. Now, he simply rolled
back and fell. Laughing, he at-
tacked again. We were weak as
babes, and fought like it. Clum-
sily, slowly, we went through
the motions.

He’d been right — he was a
little stronger, and the relative
difference began to tell. Soon I
was falling from his blows.

Hands on my neck, he kneed
me hard in the stomach. Violent-
ly ill, I felt the sulfur dioxide
rush from my lungs.

I remembered one trick they’d
taught at school, and I used it.
Unable to break his hold, I man-
aged to get my hands around
his throat. We locked, each
silent.

Silent until I felt my last re-
serves going, until the crooning
of the Song of Eternity began.
This couldn’t happen, not to this
planet. With all my strength, I
gave one last squeeze — but it
failed. From somewhere, light-
years of light-years away, I
heard Frank, realized I’d played
the fool : she’d been working for
the monster.

A blinding flash inside my
head — and the Last Darkness
descended.

The light hadn’t been inside
my head: it flooded the room.
Dimly, I was aw'are of the injec-
tion, and immediately felt bet-
ter. Harry was gone.

QUESTION OF COMFORT

The GG, minus one, was gath-
ered around. Mel said, “It was a
dilute solution of cerium nitrate.
We figured the percentage on
the basis of the pill Frank
swiped. Hope you aren’t poi-
soned.”

“No.” My voice was weak,
“Need it. Oxidizing agent for
the sulfur.”

“Harry’s dead,” Hazel frown-
ed. “When we came in, you’d
broken his neck, were crooning
to yourself.”

So / had been crooning the
Song of Eternity? “I’m a” — I
felt silly — “a cop on a mission.
I waited until whichever of you
it was settled down here. That
one had to be the criminal, to be
done away with.”

“Dex and I got rid of the
body,” Mel said. “No need to
worry unless . . . unless you’ve
read my stories. Perhaps you
are the criminal. I’ll be watch-
ing.”

“No proof, of course ... Do
you believe I’m the criminal?”

Mel smiled. “No, but I’ll
watch anyway.”

“More closely than tonight, I
hope,” Hazel said acidly. “If it
hadn’t been for her . . .”

I saw Frank, and was
ashamed of my suspicions. She
was silent, looking concerned.
They all did, and I was warmed.
Because, despite discomfort,
they worried about me, an alien,
a stranger. “Better leave. Heat’s
getting you.”

Dex asked, “When are you
going back?”

I shrugged. “Never. The ship
is in the Gulf of California . . .
Harry did that.”

“What about our company?
We can research anti-gravity.
You might reach home yet.”

I shook my head. “Said I was
a policeman. I don’t know very
much — ”

“Perfectly normal!” Mel said
before Hazel shooshed him.

Dex was insistent: “Any cop
knows at least something about
his motorcycle. Was I right
about the superconductor?”

“Yes. Now, get out of here,
idiots, before there’s no one left
to form the company!”

Hazel, perspiring freely, red
hair shimmering, kissed me.
“We figured you out real, real
early. We aren’t ever wrong,
and I’m glad we stayed with
you, Mr. Venus.” She laughed
joyously, “First time I’ve ever
kissed a Venusian!”

Frank, head close to mine,
said softly, “I’m terribly sorry
I said those things, but you had
to believe I was angry, so I
could call the others — ”

“And I did everything possi-
ble to get you out . . .”

We were silent; then I said
what I’d been fighting not to,
for so long. “Frank . . . Fran-
cis ?”

She understood, and stared
horrified at me. I’d lost. Bowed
my head, feeling like the damn-
ed fool I was.

She looked around the room.
“It’s so strange!”

“And with ingrained racial
conditioning, you couldn’t re-

AMAZING STORIES

spend to a thin, sallow alien.”

“I don’t know,” she said
hesitantly.

“I do!” Mel said. “The oldest
story in science fiction; it’s
true; I can’t write it.”

“Why not?”

“No editor in right or wrong
mind would buy the beautiful
Earth damsel, after whom lusts
the Monster from Venus — ”

Frank snapped: “He isn’t a
monster! And his manners are
better than many writers’ I
could name . . .”

Her voice trailed off with
awareness of Mel’s tiny smile —
a smile that widened. He pulled
her toward the door. ^“What a
story! We’ll hold the wedding in
a Turkish Bath.”

Alone, I sighed, comfortable
again after three years. I was

grateful to the GG, and would
do anything, within limits, for
them. Yet, my newly adopted
planet needed protection. Babes
in the woods, they’d be torn to
pieces outside.

Fortunately, the GG didn’t
know my meaning of “police-
man,” my home’s highest order
of intellect. I’d assure the group
finally getting anti-gravity and
use of planetary lines of force.
But not the hyperspace drive,
not for a good long while.

I certainly couldn’t destroy
the GG’s confidence. I couldn’t
hurt them. They were so sure
about me — so sure they were
never wrong. How could I ex-
plain I’d been looking for a de-
cent, habitable planet like Venus
to discharge my captive, that I
was from another galaxy?

THE END

"We’d better get those two out of here before we go broke!” 77

\ -■ I Wmmi’ I's ';

The guardian struggled to immobilize the beast’s gigantic talons

GALAXY PRIMES

By E. E. SMITH

as the frightened girl leaped to the safety of Garlock’s arms.

7 »

They were four of the greatest minds in the Universe; Two
men, two women, lost in an experimental spaceship bil-
lions of parsecs from home. And as they mentally charted
the Cosmos to find their way back to earth, their own
loves and hates were as startling as the worlds they
encountered. Here is E. E. Smith's great new novel. . . .

THE GALAXY PRIMES

CHAPTER 1

H er hair was a brilliant
green. So was her spectacu-
larly filled halter. So were her
tight short-shorts, her lipstick,
and the lacquer on her finger-
and toe-nails. As she strolled
into the Main of the starship,
followed hesitantly by the other
girl, she drove a mental probe at
the black-haired, powerfully-
built man seated at the instru-
ment-banked console.

Blocked.

Then at the other, slenderer
man who was rising to his feet
from the pilot’s bucket seat. His
guard was partially down; he
was telepathing a pleasant, if
somewhat reserved greeting to
both newcomers.

She turned to her companion
and spoke aloud. “So these are
the system’s best.” The empha-

sis was somewhere between con-
descension and sneer. “Not much
to choose between, I’d say . . .
’port me a tenth-piece, Glee ?
Heads, I take the tow-head.”

She flipped the coin dexterous-
ly. “Heads it is, Lola, so I get
Jim — James James James the
Ninth himself. You have the
honor of pairing with Glee — or
should I say His Learnedness
Right the Honorable Director
Doctor Gleander Simmsworth
Garlock, Doctor of Philosophy,
Doctor of Science, Prime Opera-
tor, President and First Fellow
of the Galaxian Society, First
Fellow of the Gunther Society,
Fellow of the Institute of Para-
physics, of the Institute of
Nuclear Physics, of the Gollege
of Mathematics, of the Gongress
of Psionicists, and of all the other
top-bracket brain-gangs you ever
heard of? Also, for your infor-

mation, his men have given him
a couple of informal degrees —
P.D.Q. and S.O.B.”

The big psionicist’s expression
of saturnine, almost contemptu-
ous amusement had not changed ;
his voice came flat and cold.
“The less you say, Doctor Bell-
amy, the better. Obstinate, swell-
headed women give me an acute
rectal pain. Pitching your curves
over all the vizzies in space got
you aboard, but it won’t get you
a thing from here on. And for
your information. Doctor Bell-
amy, one more crack like that
and I take you over my knee and
blister your fanny.”

“Try it, you big, clumsy, mus-
cle-bound gorilla!” she jeered.
“That I want to see! Any time
you want to get both arms brok-
en at the elbows, just try it!”

“Now’s as good a time as any.
I like your spirit, babe, but I
can’t say a thing for your judg-
ment.” He got up and started
purposefully toward her, but
both non-combatants came be-
tween.

“Jet back. Glee!” James pro-
tested, both hands against the
heavier man’s chest. What the
hell kind of show is that to put
on?” And, simultaneously:

“Belle! Shame on you! Pick-
ing a fight already, and with no-
body knows how many million
people looking on! You know as
well as I do that we may have to
spend the rest of our lives to-
gether, so act like civilized be-
ings — please — both of you! And
don’t . . .”

“Nobody’s watching this but
us,” Garlock interrupted. “When
pussy there started using her
claws I cut the gun.”

“That’s what you think,”
James said sharply, “but Fatso
and his number one girl friend
are coming in on the tight
beam.”

“Oh?” Garlock whirled to-
ward the hitherto dark and si-
lent three-dimensional communi-
cations instrument. The face of
a bossy-looking woman was al-
ready bright.

“Garlock! How dare you try to
cut Chancellor Ferber off?” she
demanded. Her voice was deep-
pitched, blatant with authority.
“Here you are, sir.”

The woman’s face shifted to
one side and a man’s appeared —
a face to justify in full the nick-
name “Fatso.”

“ ‘Fatso’, eh?” Chancellor Fer-
ber snarled. Pale eyes glared
from the fat face. “That costs
you exactly one thousand credits,
James.”

“How much will this cost me,
Fatso?” Garlock asked.

“Five thousand — and, since
nobody can call me that delib-
erately, demotion three grades
and probation for three years.
Make a note. Miss Foster.”

“Noted, sir.”

“Still sure we aren’t going
anywhere,” Garlock said. “What
a brain!”

“Sure I’m sure!” Ferber
gloated. “In a couple of hours
I’m going to buy your precious
starship in as junk. In the mean-
time, whether you like it or not,

THE GALAXY PRIMES

I’m going to watch your expres-
sion while you push all those
pretty buttons and nothing hap-
pens.”

“The trouble with you, Fatso,”
Garlock said dispassionately, as
he opened a drawer and took out
a pair of cutting pliers, “is that
all your strength is in your
glands and none in your alleged
brain. There are a lot of things
— including a lot of tests — you
know nothing about. How much
will you see after I’ve cut one
wire?”

“You w’ouldn’t dare!” the fat
man shouted. “I’d fire you —
blacklist you all over the sys . . .”

Voice and images died away
and Garlock turned to the two
women in the Main. He began to
smile, but his mental shield did
not weaken.

“You’ve got a point there,
Lola,” he said, going on as
though Ferber’s interruption
had not occurred. “Not that I
blame either Belle or myself. If
anything was ever calculated to
drive a man nuts, this farce was.
As the only female Prime in the
system. Belle should have been
in automatically — she had no
competition. And to anybody
with three brain cells working
the other place lay between you,
Lola, and the other three female
Ops in the age grnup.

“But no. Ferber and the rest
of the Board — stupidity Uher
(dies ! — think all us Ops and
Primes are psycho and that the
ship will never even lift. So they
made a Grand Circus of it. But
they succeeded in one thing —

with such abysmal stupidity so
rampant I’m getting more and
more reconciled to the idea of
our not getting back — at least,
for a long, long time.”

“Why, they said we had a
very good chance . . .” Lola be-
gan.

“Yeah, and they said a lot of
even bigger damn lies than that
one. Have you read any of my
papers?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not a mathe-
matician.”

“Our motion will be purely at
random. If it isn’t. I’ll eat this
whole ship. We won’t get back
until Jim and I work out some-
thing to steer us with. But they
must be wondering no end, out-
side, what the score is, so I’m
willing to call it a draw — tem-
porarily — and let ’em in again.
How about it. Belle?”

“A draw it is — temporarily.”
Neither, however, even offered to
shake hands.

“Smile pretty, everybody,”
Garlock said, and pressed a stud.

“. . . the matter? What’s the
matter? Oh . . . the worried
voice of the System’s ace news-
caster came in. “Power failure
already?”

“No,” Garlock replied. “I fig-
ured we had a couple of minutes
of privacy coming, if you can
understand the meaning of the
word. Now all four of us tell
everybody who is watching or
listening au revoir or good-bye,
whichever it may turn out to
be.” He reached for the switch.

“Wait a minute!” the news-
caster demanded. “Leave it on

AMAZING STORIES

until the last poss . . His voice
broke off sharply.

“Turn it back on!” Belle or-
dered.

“Nix.”

“Scared?” she sneered.

“You chirped it, bird-brain.
I’m scared purple. So would you
be, if you had three brain cells
working in that glory-hound’s
head of yours. Get set, every-
body, and we’ll take off.”

“Stop it, both of you!” Lola
exclaimed. “Where do you want
us to sit, and do we strap down?”

“You sit here; Belle at that
plate beside Jim. Yes, strap
down. There probably won’t be
any shock, and we should land
right side up, but there’s no
sense in taking chances. Sure
your stuff’s all aboard?”

“Yes, it’s in our rooms.”

The four secured themselves;
the two men checked, for the
dozenth time, their instruments.
The pilot donned his scanner.
The ship lifted effortlessly,
noiselessly. Through the atmos-
phere; through and far beyond
the stratosphere. It stopped.

“Ready, Glee?” James licked
his lips.

“As ready as I ever will be, I
guess. Shoot!”

The pilot’s right hand, fore-
finger outstretched, moved un-
enthusiastically toward a red
button on his panel . . . slowed
. . . stopped. He stared into his
scanner at the Earth so far be-
low.

“Hit it, Jim!” Garlock snap-
ped. “Hit it, for goodness sake,
before we all lose our nerve!”

James stabbed convulsively at
the button, and in the very in-
stant of contact — instantaneous-
ly; without a fractional micro-
second of time-lapse — their fa-
miliar surroundings disappeared.
Or, rather, and without any sen-
sation of motion, of displace-
ment, or of the passage of any
time whatsoever, the planet be-
neath them was no longer their
familiar Earth. The plates show-
ed no familiar stars nor patterns
of heavenly bodies. The brightly-
shining sun was very evidently
not their familiar Sol.

“Well — we went somewhere
. . . but not to Alpha Centauri,
not much to our surprise.”
James gulped twice; then went
on, speaking almost jauntily now
that the attempt had been made
and had failed. “So now it’s up
to you. Glee, as Director of Proj-
ect Gunther and captain of the
good ship Pleiades, to boss the
more-or-less simple — more, I
hope — job of getting us back to
Tellus.”

Science, both physical and
paraphysical, had done its best.
Gunther’s Theorems, which de-
fine the electromagnetic and elec-
trogravitic parameters pertain-
ing to the annihilation of
distance, had been studied, test-
ed, and applied to the full. So
had the Psionic Gorollaries ;
which, while not having the sta-
tus of paraphysical laws, do al-
low computation of the qualities
and magnitudes of the stresses
required for any given applica-
tion of the Gunther Effect.

THE GALAXY PRIMES

The planning of the starship
Pleiades had been difficult in the
extreme; its construction almost
impossible. While it was prac-
tically a foregone conclusion that
any man of the requisite caliber
would already be a member of
the Galaxian Society, the three
planets and eight satellites were
screened, psionicist by psionicist,
to select the two strongest and
most versatile of their breed.

These two, Garlock and James,
were heads of departments of,
and under iron-clad contract to,
vast Solar System Enterprises,
Inc., the only concern able and
willing to attempt the building
of the first starship.

Alonzo P. Ferber, Chancellor
of SSE, however, would not risk
a tenth-piece of the company’s
money on such a bird-brained
scheme. Himself a Gunther
First, he believed implicitly that
Firsts were in fact tops in Gun-
ther ability ; that these few self-
styled “Operators” and “Prime
Operators” were either charla-
tans or self-deluded crackpots.
Since he could not feel that so-
called “Operator Field,” no such
thing did or could exist. No
Gunther starship could ever,
possibly, work.

He did loan Garlock and James
to the Galaxians, but that was as
far as he would go. For salaries
and for labor, for research and
material, for trials and for
errors; the Society paid and
paid and paid.

Thus the starship Pleiades had
cost the Galaxian Society almost
a thousand million credits.

Garlock and James had w’ork-
ed on the ship since its incep-
tion. They were to be of the
crew ; for over a year it had been
taken for granted that would be
its only crew.

As the Pleiades neared com-
pletion, however, it became
clearer and clearer that the dis-
placement-control presented an
unsolved, and quite possibly an
insoluble, problem. It was mathe-
matically certain that, when the
Gunther field went on, the ship
would be displaced instantane-
ously to some location in space
having precisely the Gunther
coordinates required by that par-
ticular field. One impeccably
rigorous analysis showed that
the ship would shift into the
nearest solar system possessing
an Earth-type planet; which
was believed to be Alpha Cen-
taur! and which was close
enough to Sol so that orientation
would be automatic and the re-
turn to Earth a simple matter.

Since the Gunther Effect did
in fact annihilate distance, how-
ever, another group of mathema-
ticians, led by Garlock and
James, proved with equal rigor
that the point of destination was
no more likely to be any one
given Gunther point than any
other one of the myriads of bil-
lions of equiguntherial points
undoubtedly existent throughout
the length, breadth, and thick-
ness of our entire normal space-
time continuum.

The two men would go any-
way, of course. Carefully-calcu-

AMAZING STORIES

lated pressures would make them
go. It was neither necessary nor
desirable, however, for them to
go alone.

Wherefore the planets and
satellites were combed again;
this time to select two women —
the two most highly-gifted
psionicists in the eighteen-to-
twenty-five age group. Thus, if
the Pleiades returned successful-
ly to Earth, well and good. If she
did not, the four selectees would
found, upon some far-off world,
a .z’ace much abler than the hu-
manity of Earth; since eighty-
three percent of Earth’s dwellers
had psionic grades lower than
Four.

This search, with its attend-
ant fanfare and studiedly blatant
publicity, was so planned and
engineered that two selected
women did not arrive at the
spaceport until a bare fifteen
minutes before the scheduled
time of take-off. Thus it made
no difference whether the women
liked the men or not, or vice
versa; or whether or not any of
them really wanted to make the
trip. Pressures were such that
each of them had to go, whether
he or she wanted to or not.

“Cut the rope, Jim, and let the
old bucket drop,” Garlock said.
“Not too close. Before we make
any kind of contact we’ll have to
do some organizing. These in-
struments,” he waved at his
console, “show that ours is the
only Operator Field in this whole
region of space. Hence, there are
no Operators and no Primes.

THE GALAXY PRIMES

That means that from now until
we get back to Tellus . . .’’

“If we get back to Tellus,”
Belle corrected, sweetly.

“Until we get back to Tellus
there will be no Gunthering
aboard this ship . . .”

“What?” Belle broke in again.
“Have you lost your mind?”

“There will be little if any
lepping, and nothing else at all.
At the table, if we want sugar,
we will reach for it or have it
passed. We will pick up things,
such as cigarettes, with our fin-
gers. We will carry lighters and
use them. When we go from
place to place, we will walk. Is
that clear?”

“You seem to be talking Eng-
lish,” Belle sneered, “but the
words don’t make sense.”

“I didn’t think you were that
stupid.” Eyes locked and held.
Then Garlock grinned savagely.
“Okay. You tell her, Lola, in
words of as few syllables as pos-
sible.”

“Why, to get used to it, ,of
course,” Lola explained, while
Belle glared at Garlock in frus-
trated anger. “So as not to re-
veal anything we don’t have to.”

“Thank you. Miss Montandon,
you may go to the head of the
class. All monosyllables except
two. That should make it clear,
even to Miss Bellamy.”

“You . . . you beast!” Belle
drove a tight-beamed thought.
“I was never so insulted in my
life!”

“You asked for it. Keep on
asking for it and you’ll keep on
getting it.” Then, aloud, to all

three, “In emergencies, of
course, anything goes. We will
now proceed with business.” He
paused, then went on, bitingly,
“If possible.”

“One minute, please!” Belle
snapped. “Just why. Captain
Garlock, are you insisting on oral
communication, when lepping is
so much faster and better? It’s
stupid — reactionary. Don’t you
ever lep?”

“With Jim, on business, yes;
with women, no more than I
have to. What I think is nobody’s
business but mine.”

“What a way to run a ship I Or
a project!”

“Running this project is my
business, not yours; and if
there’s any one thing in the en-
tire universe it does not need,
it’s a female exhibitionist. Be-
sides your obvious qualifications
to be one of the Eves in case of
Ultimate Contingency . . .” he
broke off and stared at her, his
contemptuous gaze traveling
slowly, dissectingly, from her
toes to the topmost wave of her
hair-do.

“Forty-two, twenty, forty?”
he sneered.

“You flatter me.” Her glare
was an almost tangible force ;
her voice was controlled fury.

“Thirty-nine, twenty-two, thir-
ty-five. Five seven. One thirty-
five. If any of it’s any of your
business, which it isn’t. You
should be discussing brains and
ability, not vital statistics.”

“Brains? Y'ou? No, I’ll take
that back. As a Prime, you have
got a brain — one that really

works. What do you think you’re
good for on this project? What
can you do?”

“I can do anything any man
ever born can do, and do it bet-
ter!”

“Okay. Compute a Gunther
field that will put us two hun-
dred thousand feet directly
above the peak of that moun-
tain.”

“That isn’t fair — not that I
expected fairness from you —
and you know it. That doesn’t
take either brains or ability . . .”

“Oh, no?”

“No. Merely highly specialized
training that you know I haven’t
had. Give me a five-tape course
on it and I’ll come closer than
either you or James; for a hun-
dred credits a shot.”

“I’ll do just that. Something
you are supposed to know, then.
How would you go about mak-
ing first contact?”

“Well, I wouldn’t do it the way
you would — by knocking down
the first native I saw, putting
my foot on his face, and yelling
‘Bow down, you stupid, ignorant
beasts, and worship me, the Su-
preme God of the Macrocosmic
Universe’ !”

“Try again. Belle, that one
missed me by . . .”

“Hold it, both of you!” James
broke in. “What the hell are you
trying to prove? How about cut-
ting out this cat-and-dog act and
getting some work done?”

“You’ve got a point there,”
Garlock admitted, holding his
temper by a visible effort. “Sor-

AMAZING STORIES

ry, Jim. Belle, what w'ere you
briefed for?”

“To understudy you.” She, too,
fought her temper down. “To
learn everything about Project
Gunther. I have a whole box of
tapes in my room, including ad-
vanced Gunther math and first-
contact techniques. I’m to study
them during all my on-watch
time unless you assign other
duties.”

“No matter what your duties
may be, you’ll have to have time
to study. If you don’t find what
you v/ant in your own tapes —
and you probably won’t, since
Ferber and his Miss Foster ran
the selections — use our library.
It’s good — designed to carry on
our civilization. Miss Montan-
don? No, that’s silly, the way
we’re fixed. Lola?”

“I’m to learn how to be Doc-
tor James’ ...”

“Jim, please, Lola,” James
said. “And call him Clee."

“I’d like that.” She smiled
winningly. “And my friends call
me ‘Brownie’.”

“I see why they would. It fits
like a coat of lacquer.”

It did. Her hair was a dark,
lustrous brown, as were her eye-
brows. Her eyes were brown.
Her skin, too — her dark red
playsuit left little to the imag-
ination — ^was a rich and even
brown. Originally fairly dark, it
had been tanned to a moi-e-than-
fashionable depth of color by
naked sun-bathing and by prac-
tically-naked outdoor sports. A
couple of inches shorter than the

green-haired girl, she too had a
figure to make any sculptor
drool.

“I’m to be Dr. Jim’s assistant.
I have a thousand tapes, more
or less, to study, too. It’ll be
quite a while, I’m afraid, before
I can be of much use, but I’ll do
the best I can.”

“If we had hit Alpha Cen-
tauri that arrangement would
have been good, but as we are,
it isn’t.” Garlock frowned in
thought, his heavy black eye-
brov/s almost meeting above his
finely-chiseled aquiline nose.
“Since neither Jim nor I need
an assistant any more than we
need tails, it was designed to
give you girls something to do.
But out here, lost, there’s work
for a dozen trained specialists
'and there are only four of us.
So we shouldn’t duplicate effort.
Right? You first. Belle.”

“Are you asking me or telling
me?” she asked. “And that’s a
fair question. Don’t read any-
thing into it that isn’t there.
With your attitude, I want in-
formation.”

“I am asking you,” he I’eplied,
carefully. “For your informa-
tion, when I know what should
be done, I give orders. When I
don’t know, as now, I ask ad-
vice. If I like it, I follow it. Fail-
enough?”

“Fair enough. We’re apt to
need any number of specialists.”

“Lola?”

“Of course we shouldn’t du-
plicate. What shall I study?”

“That’s what we must figure
out. We can’t do it exactly, of

THE GALAXY PRIMES

course ; all we can do now is to
set up a rough scheme. Jim’s job
is the only one that’s definite.
He’ll have to work full time on
nebular configurations. If we hit
inhabited planets he’ll have to
add their star-charts to his own.
That leaves three of us to do all
the other work of a survey.
Ideally, we w^ould cover all the
factors that would be of use in
getting us back to Tellus, but
since we don’t know what those
factors are . . . Found out any-
thing yet, Jim?”

“A little. Tellus-tjT)e planet,
apparently strictly so. Oceans
and continents. Lots of inhabi-
tants — farms, villages, all sizes
of cities. Not close enough to say
definitely, but inhabitants seem
to be humanoid, if not human.”

“Hold her here. Besides as-
tronomy, which is all yours, what
do we need most?”

“We should have enough to
classify planets and inhabitants,
so as to chart a space-trend if
there is any. I’d say the most
important ones would be geol-
ogy, stratigraphy, paleontology,
oceanography, xenology, anthro-
pology, ethnology, vertebrate
biology, botany, and at least
some ecology.”

“That’s about the list I was
afraid of. But there are only
three of us. The fields you men-
tion number much more.”

“Each of you will have to be
a lot of specialists in one, then.
I’d say the best split would be
planetology, xenologj’’, and an-
thropology — each, of course,
stretched all out of shape to

cover dozens of related and non-
related specialties.”

“Good enough. Xenology, of
course, is mine. Contacts, liaison,
politics, correlation, and so on,
as well as studying the non-hu-
man life forms — including as
many lower animals and plants
as possible. I’ll make a stab at
it. Now, Belle, since you’re a
Prime and Lola’s an Operator,
you get the next toughest job.
Planetography.”

. “Why not?” Belle smiled and
began to act as one of the party.
“All I know about it is a hazy
idea of what the word means,
but I’ll start studying as soon as
we get squared away.”

“Thanks. That leaves anthro-
pology to you, Lola. Besides,
that’s your line, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Sociological Anthropol-
ogy. I have my M.S. in it, and
am — was, I mean — working for
my Ph.D. But as Jim said, it
isn’t only the one specialty. You
want me, I take it, to cover hu-
manoid races, too?”

“Check. You and Jim both,
then, will know what you’re do-
ing, while Belle and I are trying
to play ours by ear.”

“Where do we draw the line
between humanoid and non-hu-
man?”

“In case of doubt we’ll confer.
That covers it as much as we
can, I think. Take us down, Jim
— and be on your toes to take
evasive action fast.”

The ship dropped rapidly to-
ward an airport just outside a
fairly large city. Fifty thousand

AMAZING STORIES

— forty thousand — thirty thous-
and feet.

“Calling strange spaceship —
you must be a spaceship, in
spite of your tremendous, hither-
to-considered-impossible mass — ”
a thought impinged on all four
Tellurian minds, “do you read
me?”

“I read you clearly. This is
the Tellurian spaceship Pleiades,
Captain Garlock commanding,
asking permission to land and
information as to landing con-
ventions.” He did not have to
tell James to stop the ship;
James had already done so.

“I was about to ask you to
hold position; I thank you for
having done so. Hold for inspec-
tion and type-test, please. We
will not blast unless you fire first.
A few minutes, please.”

A group of twelve jet fighters
took off practically vertically up-
ward and climbed with fantastic
speed. They leveled off a thous-
and feet below the Pleiades and
made a flying circle. Up and into
the ring thus formed there lum-
bered a large, clumsy-looking
helicopter.

“We have no record of any
planet named ‘Tellus’ ; nor of
any such ship as yours. Of such
incredible mass and with no visi-
ble or detectable means of sup-
port or of propulsion. Not from
this part of the galaxy, certainly
. . . could it be that inter-galac-
tic travel is actually possible?
But excuse me, Captain Garlock,
none of that is any of my busi-
ness ; which is to determine

whether or not you four Tellur-
ian human beings are compatible
with, and thus acceptable to, our
humanity of Hodell ... but you
do not seem to have a standard
televideo testing-box aboard.”

"No, sir; only our own tridi
and teevee.”

“You must be examined by
means of a standard box. I will
rise to your level and teleport
one across to you. It is self-pow-
ered and fully automatic.”

"You needn’t rise, sir. Just
toss the box out of your 'copter
into the air. We’ll take it from
there.” Then, to James, “Take it,
Jim.”

“Oh? You can lift large
masses against much gravity?”
The alien was all attention. “I
have not known that such power
existed. I will observe with keen
interest.”

“I have it,” James said. “Here
it is.”

“Thank you, sir,” Garlock
said to the alien. Then, to Lola:
“You’ve been reading these —
these Hodellians?”

“The officer in the helicopter
and those in the fighters, yes.
Most of them are Gunther
Firsts.”

“Good girl. The set’s coming
to life — watch it.”

The likeness of the alien be-
ing became clear upon the alien
screen; visible from the waist
up. While humanoid, the crea-
ture was very far indeed from
being human. He — at least, it
had masculine rudimentary nip-
ples — had double shoulders and
four arms. His skin was a vivid-

THE GALAXY PRIMES

ly intense cobalt blue. His ears
were black, long, and highly
dirigible. His eyes, a flaming
red in color, were large and ver-
tically-slitted, like a cat’s. He
had no hair at all. His nose was
large and Roman; his jaw was
square, almost jutting; his
bright-yellow teeth were clean
and sharp.

After a minute of study the
alien said; “Although your ves-
sel is so entirely alien that noth-
ing even remotely like it is on
record, you four are completely
human and, if of compatible
type, acceptable. Are there any
other living beings aboard with
you?”

“Excepting micro-organisms,
none.”

“Such life is of no importance.
Approach, please, one of you,
and grasp with a hand the pro-
jecting metal knob.”

With a little trepidation, Gar-
lock did so. He felt no unusual
sensation at the contact.

“All four of you are compati-
ble and we accept you. This
finding is surprising in the ex-
treme, as you are the first hu-
man beings of record who grade
higher than what you call Gun-
ther Two ... or Gunther Sec-
ond?”

“Either one; the terms are
interchangeable.”

“You have minds of tremen-
dous development and power;
definitely superior even to my
own. However, there is no doubt
that physically you are perfectly
compatible with our humanity.
Your blood will be of great bene-

fit to it. You may land. Good-
bye.”

“Wait, please. How about
landing conventions? And visit-
ing restrictions and so on? And
may we keep this box? We will
be glad to trade you something
for it, if we have anything you
would like to have?”

“Ah, I should have realized
that your customs would be
widely different from ours. Since
you have been examined and ac-
cepted, there are no restrictions.
You will not act against human-
ity’s good. Land where you
please, go where you please, do
what you please as long as you
please. Take up permanent resi-
dence or leave as soon as you
please. Marry if you like, or
simply breed — your unions with
this planet’s humanity will be
fertile. Keep the box without
payment. As Guardians of Hu-
manity we Arpalones do what-
ever small favors we can. Have
I made myself clear?”

“Abundantly so. Thank you,
sir.”

“Now I really must go. Good-
bye.”

Garlock glanced into his plate.
The jets had disappeared, the
helicopter was falling rapidly
away. He wiped his brow.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he
said.

When his amazement subsided
he turned to the business at
hand. “Lola, do you check me
that this planet is named Hodell,
that it is populated by creatures
exactly like us? Arpalones?”

AMAZING STORIES

“Exactly, except they aren’t
‘creatures’. They are humanoids,
and very fine people.”

“You’d think so, of course . . .
correction accepted. Well, let’s
take advantage of their extraor-
dinarily hospitable invitation
and go down. Cut the rope, Jim.”

The airport was very large,
and was divided into several sec-
tions, each of which was equip-
ped with runways and/or other
landing facilities to suit one
class of craft — propeller jobs,
jets, or helicopters. There were
even a few structures that look-
ed like rocket pits.

“Where are you going to sit
down, Jim? With the ’copters or
over by the blast-pits?”

“With the ’copters, I think.
Since I can place her to within
a couple of inches, I’ll put her
squarely into that far corner,
where she’ll be out of every-
body’s way.”

“No concrete out there,” Gar-
lock said. “But the ground seems
good and solid.”

“We’d better not land on con-
crete,” James grinned. “Unless
it’s terrific stuff we’d smash it.
On bare ground, the worst we
can do is sink in a foot or so,
and that won’t hurt anything.”

“Check. A few tons to the
square foot, is all. Shall we
strap down and hang onto our
teeth ?”

“Who do you think you’re kid-
ding, boss? Even though I’ve got
to do this on manual, I won’t tip
over a half-piece standing on
edge.”

James stopped talking, pulled
out his scanner, stuck his face
into it. The immense starship
settled downward toward the
selected corner. There was no
noise, no blast, no flame, no
slightest visible or detectable
sign of whatever force it was
that was braking the thousands
of tons of the vessel’s mass in
its miles-long, almost-vertical
plunge to ground.

When the Pleiades struck
ground the impact was scarcely
to be felt. When she came to
rest, after settling into the
ground her allotted “foot or so,”
there was no jar at all.

“Atmosphere, temperature,
and so on, approximately Earth-
normal,” Garlock said. “Just as
our friend said it would be.”

James scanned the city and
the field. “Our visit is kicking
up a lot of excitement. Shall we
go out?”

“Not yet!” Belle exclaimed.
“I want to see how the women
are dressed, first.”

“So do I,” Lola added, “and
some other things besides.”

Both women — Lola through
her Operator’s scanner; Belle by
manipulating the ship’s tremen-
dous Operator Field by the
sheer power of her Prime Oper-
ator’s mind — stared eagerly at
the crowd of people now begin-
ning to stream across the field.

“As an anthropologist,” Lola
announced, “I’m not only sur-
prised. I am shocked, annoyed,
and disgruntled. Why, they’re
exactly like white Tellurian hu-
man beings!”

THE GALAXY PRIMES

“But look at their clothesl”
Belle insisted. “They’re wearing
anything and everything, from
bikinis to coveralls!”

“Yes, but notice.” This was
the anthropological scientist
speaking now. “Breasts and
loins, covered. Faces, uncovered.
Heads and feet and hands,
either bare or covered. Ditto for
legs up to there, backs, arms,
necks and shoulders down to
here, and torsos clear down to
there. We’ll not violate any con-
ventions by going out as we are.
Not even you. Belle. You first.
Chief. Yours the high honor of
setting first foot — the biggest
foot we’ve got, too — on alien
soil.”

“To hell with that. We’ll go
out together.”

“Wait a minute,” Lola went
on. “There’s a funny-looking au-
tomobile just coming through
the gate. 'The Press. Three men
and two women. Two cameras,
one walkie-talkie, and two
microphones. The photog in the
purple shirt is really a sharpie
at lepping. Class Three, at least
— possibly a Two.”

“How about screens down
enough to lep, boss?” Belle sug-
gested. “Faster. We may need
it.”

“Check. I’m too busy to re-
cord, answvay — I’ll log this stuff
up tonight,” and thoughts flew.

“Check me, Jim,” Garlock
flashed. “Telepathy, very good.
On Gunther, the guy was right
— no signs at all of any First
activity, and very few Seconds.”

“Check,” James agreed.

“And Lola, those ‘Guardians’
out there. I thought they were
the same as the Arpalone we
talked to. They aren’t. Not even
telepathic. Same color scheme,
is all.”

“Right. Much more brutish.
Much flatter cranium. Long,
tearing canine teeth. Carnivo-
rous. I’ll call them just ‘guard-
ians’ until we find out what they
really are.”

The press car arrived and the
Tellurians disembarked — and,
accidentally or not, it was Belle’s
green slipper that first touched
ground. 'There was a terrific
babel of thought, worse, even,
than voices in similar case, in
being so much faster. The re-
porters, all of them, wanted to
know everything at once. How,
what, where, when, and why.
Also who. And all about Tellus
and the Tellurian solar system.
How did the visitors like Ho-
dell ? And all about Belle’s green
hair. And the photographers
were prodigal of film, shooting
everything from all possible
angles.

“Hold it!” Garlock loosed a
blast of thought that “silenced”
almost the w'hole field. “We will
have order, please. Lola Montan-
don, our anthropologist, will
take charge. Keep it orderly,
Lola, if you have to throw half
of them off the field. I’m going
over to Administration and
check in. One of you reporters
can come with me, if you like.”

The man in the purple shirt
got his bid in first. As the two

AMAZING STORIES

men walked away together, Gar-
lock noted that the man was in
fact a Second — his flow of lucid,
cogent thought did not interfere
at all with the steady stream of
speech going into his portable
recorder. Garlock also noticed
that in any group of more than
a dozen people there was always
at least one guardian. They paid
no attention whatever to the
people, who in turn ignored them
completely. Garlock wondered
briefly. Guardians? The Arpa-
lones, out in space, yes. But
these creatures, naked and un-
armed on the ground? The Ar-
palones were non-human people.
These things were — ^what?

At the door of the Field Office
the reporter, after turning Gar-
lock over to a startlingly beauti-
ful, leggy, breasty, blonde recep-
tionist-usherette, hurried away.

He flecked a feeler at her
mind and stiffened. How could a
Two — a high Two, at that — be
working as an usher? And with
her guard down clear to the
floor? He probed — and saw.

“Lola!” He flashed a tight-
beamed thought. “You aren’t
putting out anything about our
sexual customs, family life, and
so on.”

“Of course not. We must know
their mores first.”

“Good girl. Keep your shield
up.”

“Oh, we’re so glad to see you.
Captain Garlock, sir!” The
blonde, who was dressed little
more heavily than the cigarette
girls in Venusberg’s Cartier

Room, seized his left hand in
both of hers and held it consid-
erably longer than was neces-
sary. Her dazzling smile, her
laughing eyes, her flashing
white teeth, the many exposed
inches of her skin, and her com-
pletely unshielded mind ; all
waved banners of welcome.

“Captain Garlock, sir. Gover-
nor Atterlin has been most anx-
ious to see you ever since you
were first detected. This way,
please, sir.” She turned, brush-
ing her bare hip against his leg
in the process, and led him by
the hand along a hallway. Her
thoughts flowed. “I have been,
too, sir, and I’m simply delight-
ed to see you close up, and I hope
to see a lot more of you. You’re
a wonderfully pleasant surprise,
sir; I’ve never seen a man like
you before. I don’t think Hodell
ever saw a man like you before,
sir. With such a really terrific
mind and yet so big and strong
and well-built and handsome
and clean-looking and blackish.
You’re wonderful. Captain Gar-
lock, sir. You’ll be here a long
time, I hope? Here we are, sir.”

She opened a door, walked
across the room, sat down in an
overstuffed chair, and crossed
her legs meticulously. Then, still
smiling happily, she followed
with eager eyes and mind Gar-
lock’s every move.

Garlock had been reading
Governor Atterlin; knew why it
was the governor who was in
that office instead of the port
manager. He knew that Atterlin
had been reading him — as much

THE GALAXY PRIMES

as he had allowed. They had al-
ready discussed many things,
and were still discussing.

The room was much more like
a library than an office. The gov-
ernor, a middle-aged, red-headed
man a trifle inclined to portli-
ness, had been seated in a huge
reclining chair facing a teevee
screen, but got up to shake
hands.

“Welcome, friend Captain
Garlock. Now, to continue. As to
exchange. Many ships visiting
us have nothing we need or can
use. For such, all services are
free — or rather, are paid by the
city. Our currency is based upon
platinum, but gold, silver, and
copper are valuable. Certain
jewels, also . . .”

“That’s far enough. We will
pay our way — ^we have plenty of
metal. What are your ratios of
value for the four metals here on
Hodell?”

“Today’s quotations are . . .’’
He glanced at a screen, and his
fingers flashed over the keys of
a computer beside his chair.
"One weight of platinum is
equal in value to seven point
three four six . . .’’

“Decimals are not necessary,
sir.’’

“Seven plus, then, weights of
gold. One of gold to eleven of
silver. One of silver to four of
copper.”

“Thank you. We’ll use plati-
num. I’ll bring some bullion to-
morrow morning and exchange
it for your currency. Shall I
bring it here, or to a bank in the
city?”

“Either. Or we can have an
armored truck visit your ship.”

“That would be better yet.
Have them bring about five
thousand tanes. Thank you very
much. Governor Atterlin, and
good afternoon to you, sir.”

“And good afternoon to you,
sir. Until tomorrow, then.”

Garlock turned to leave.

“Oh, may I go with you to
your ship, sir, to take just a
little look at it?” the girl asked,
winningly.

“Of course. Grand Lady Nel-
dine. I’d like to have your com-
pany.”

She seized his elbow and hug-
ged it quickly against her
breast. Then, taking his hand,
she walked — almost skipped —
along beside him. “And I want
to see Pilot James close up, too,
sir — he’s not nearly as wonder-
ful as you are, sir — and I won-
der why Planetographer Bel-
lamy’s hair is green? Very
striking, of course, sir, but I
don’t think I’d care for it much
on me — unless you’d think I
should, sir?”

Belle knew, of course, that
they were coming; and Garlock
knew that Belle’s hackles were
very much on the rise. She could
not read him, except very sup-
erficially, but she was reading
the strange girl like a book and
was not liking anything she
read. Wherefore, when Garlock
and his joyous companion reach-
ed the great spaceship —

“How come you picked up that
little man-eating shark?” she

AMAZING STORIES

sent, venemously, on a tight
band.

“It wasn’t a case of picking
her up.” Garlock grinned. “I
haven’t been able to find any
urbane way of scraping her off.
First Contact, you know.”

“She wants altogether too
much Contact for a First — I’ll
scrape her off, even if she is one
of the nobler class on this
world . . .” Belle changed her
tactics even before Garlock be-
gan his reprimand. “I shouldn’t
have said that, Glee, of course.”
She laughed lightly. “It was just
the shock ; there wasn’t any-
thing in any of my First Con-
tact tapes covering what to do
about beautiful and enticing
girls who try to seduce our men.
She doesn’t know, though, of
course, that she’s supposed to be
a bug-eyed monster and not hu-
man at all. Won’t Xenology be
in for a rough ride when we
check in? Wow!”

“You can play that in spades,
sister.” And for the rest of the
day Belle played fiawlessly the
role of perfect hostess.

It was full dark before the
Hodellians could be persuaded to
leave the Pleiades and the locks
were closed.

“I have refused one hundred
seventy-eight invitations,” Lola
reported then. “All of us, indi-
vidually and collectively, have
been invited to eat everything,
everywhere in town. To see
shows in a dozen different thea-
ters and eighteen night spots.
To dance all night in twenty-one

different places, ranging from
dives to strictly soup-and-fish. I
was nice about it, of course —
just begged off because we were
dead from our belts both ways
from our long, hard trip. My
thought, of course, is that we’d
better eat our own food and take
it slowly at first. Check, Clee?”

“On the beam, dead center.
And you weren’t lying much,
'either. I feel as though I’d done
a day’s work. After supper
there’s a thing I’ve got to dis-
cuss with all three of you.”

Supper was soon over. Then:

“We’ve got to make a mighty
important decision,” Garlock be-
gan, abruptly. “Grand Lady
Neldine — that title isn’t exact,
but close — ^wondered why I
didn’t respond at all, either way.
However, she didn’t make a
point of it, and I let her wonder ;
but we’ll have to decide by to-
morrow morning what to do, and
it’ll have to be airtight. These
Hodellians expect Jim and me
to impregnate as many as pos-
sible of their highest-rated
women before we leave. By their
Code it’s mandatory, since we
can’t hide the fact that we rate
much higher than they do —
their highest rating is only
Grade Two by our standards —
and all the planets hereabouts
up-grade themselves with the
highest-grade new blood they
can find. Ordinarily, they’d ex-
pect you two girls to become
pregnant by your choices of the
top men of the planet; but they
know you wouldn’t breed down
and don’t expect you to. But how

THE GALAXY PRIMES

in all hell can Jim and I refuse
to breed them up without deal-
ing out the deadliest insult they
know?”

There was a minute of silence.
“We can’t,” James said then. A
grin began to spread over his
face. “It might not be too bad
an idea, at that, come to think
of it. That ball of fire they pick-
ed out for you would be a blue-
ribbon dish in anybody’s cook-
book. And Grand Lady Lem-
phi — ” He kissed the tips of two
fingers and waved them in the
air. “Strictly Big League Mate-
rial; in capital letters.”

“Is that nice, you back-alley
tomcat?” Belle asked, plaintive-
ly ; then paused in thought and
went on slowly, I won’t pretend
to like it, but I won’t do any
public screaming about it.”

“Any anthropologist would
say you’ll have to,” Lola declared
without hesitation. “I don’t like
it, either. I think it’s horrible;
but it’s excellent genetics and
we cannot and must not violate
systems-wide mores.”

“You’re all missing the
point!” Garlock snapped. He got
up, jammed his hands into his
pockets, and began to pace the
floor. “I didn’t think any one of
you was that stupid I If that was
all there were to it we’d do it as
a matter of course. But think,
damn it! There’s nothing higher
than Gunther Two in the hu-
manity of this planet. Telepathy
is the only ESP they have. High
Gunther uses hitherto unused
portions of the brain. It’s trans-
mitted through genes, which are

dominant, cumulative, and self-
multiplying by interaction. Jim
and I carry more, stronger, and
higher Gunther genes than any
other two men known to live.
Can we — dare we — plant such
genes where none have ever
been known before?”

Two full minutes of silence.

“That one has really got a
bone in it,” James said, unhelp-
fully.

Three minutes more of si-
lence.

“It’s up to you, Lola,” Garlock
said then. “It’s your field.”

“I was afraid of that. There’s
a way. Personally, I like it less
even than the other, but it’s the
only one I’ve been able to think
up. First, are you absolutely
sure that our refusal — Belle’s
and mine, I mean — to breed
down will be valid with them?”

“Positive.”

“Then the whole society from
which we come will have to be
strictly monogamous, in the
narrowest, most literal sense of
the term. No exceptions what-
ever. Adultery, anything illicit,
has always been not only unim-
aginable, but in fact impossible.
We pair — or marry, or whatever
they do here — once only. For
life. Desire and potency can ex-
ist only within the pair; never
outside it. Like eagles. If a
man’s wife dies, even, he loses
all desire and all potency. That
would make it physically impos-
sible for you two to follow the
Hodellian Code. You’d both be
completely impotent with any

AMAZING STORIES

women whatever except your
mates — Belle and me.”

"That will work,” Belle said.
“How it will work!” She paused.
Then, suddenly, she whistled;
the loud, full-bodied, ear-pierc-
ing, tongue-and-teeth whistle
which so few women ever mas-
ter. Her eyes sparkled and she
began to laugh with unrestrain-
ed glee. “But do you know what
you’ve done, Lola?”

“Nothing, except to suggest a
solution. What’s so funny about
that?”

“You’re wonderful, Lola —
simply priceless! You’ve created
something brand-new to science
— an impotent tomcat! And the
more I think about it . . .” Belle
was rocking back and forth with
laughter. She could not possibly
talk, but her thought flowed on,
"I just love you all to pieces!
An impotent tomcat, and he’ll
Mve to stay true to me — Oh,
this is simply killing me — I’ll
never live through it!”

“It does put us on the spot —
especially Jim,” came Garlock’s
thought.

He, too, began to laugh; and
Lola, as soon as she stopped
thinking about the thing only as
a problem in anthropology, join-
ed in. James, however, did not
think it was very funny.

“And that’s less than half of
it!” Belle went on, still unable
to talk. “Think of Glee, Lola. Six
two — over two hundred — hard
as nails — a perfect hunk of hard
red meat — telling this whole
damn cockeyed region of space

that he’s impotent, too! And
with a perfectly straight face!
And it ties in so beautifully
with his making no response, yes
or no, w'hen she propositioned
him. The poor, innocent, impo-
tent lamb just simply didn’t
have even the faintest inkling
of what she meant! Oh, my . . .”

“Listen — listen — listen!”
James managed finally to break
in. “Not that I want to be pro-
miscuous, but . .

“There, there, my precious
little impotent tomcat,” Belle
soothed him aloud, between gig-
gles and snorts. “Us Earth-girls
will take care of our lover-boys,
see if we don’t. You won’t need
any nasty little . . .” Belle could
not hold the pose, but went off
again into whoops of laughter.
“What a brain you’ve got, Lola!
I thought I could imagine any-
thing, but to make these two
guys of our.s — the two absolute
tops of the whole Solar System
— it’s a stroke of genius . . .”

“Shut up, will you, you human
hyena, and listenl” James I’oar-
ed aloud. “There ought to be
some better way than that.”

“Better? Than sheer perfec-
tion?” Belle was still laughing
but could now talk coherently.

“If you can think of another
way, Jim, the meeting is still
open.” Garlock was wiping his
eyes. “But it’ll have to be a
dilly. I’m not exactly enamored
of Lola’s idea, either, but as the
answer it’s one hundred percent
to as many decimal places as you
want to take time to write
zeroes.”

THE GALAXY PRIMES

There was more talk, but no
improvement could be made up-
on Lola’s idea.

“Well, we’ve got until morn-
ing,’’ Garlock said, finally. “If
anybody comes up with any-
thing by then, let me know. If
not, it goes into elfect the min-
ute we open the locks. The meet-
ing is adjourned.”

Belle and James left the room ;
and, a few minutes later. Gar-
lock went out. Lola followed him
into his room and closed the
door behind her. She sat down
on the edge of a, chair, lighted
a cigarette, and began to smoke
in short, nervous puffs. She
opened her mouth to say some-
thing, but shut it without mak-
ing a sound.

“You’re afraid of me, Lola?”
he asked, quietly.

“Oh, I don’t . . . Well, that
is . . .” She wouldn’t lie, and she
wouldn’t admit the truth. “You
see. I’ve never ... I mean, I
haven’t had very much experi-
ence.”

“You needn’t be afraid of me
at all. I’m not going to pair with
you.”

“You’re not?” Her mouth
dropped open and the cigarette
fell out of it. She took a few
seconds to recover it. “Why not?
Don’t you think I could do a
good enough job?”

She stood up and stretched,
to shov/ her splendid figure to its
best advantage.

Garlock laughed. “Nothing
like that, Lola; you have plenty
of sex appeal. It’s just that I

don’t like the conditions. I never
have paired. I never have had
much to do with women, and
that little has been urbane, logi-
cal, and strictly en passant; on
the level of mutual physical de-
sire. Thus, I have never taken a
virgin. Pairing with one is very
definitely not my idea of urban-
ity and there’s altogether too
much obligation to suit me. For
all of which good reasons I am
not going to pair with you, now
or ever.”

“How do you know whether
I’m a virgin or not? You’ve nev-
er read me that deep. Nobody
can. Not even you, unless I let
you.”

“Reading isn’t necessary —
you flaunt it like a banner.”

“I don’t know what you mean
. . . I certainly don’t do it in-
tentionally. But I ought to pair
with you. Glee!” Lola had lost
all of her nervousness, most of
her fear. “It’s part of the job I
was chosen for. If I’d known,
I’d’ve gone out and got some ex-
perience. Really I would have.”

“I believe that. I think you
would have been silly enough to
have done just that. And you
have a very high regard for
your virginity, too, don’t you?”

“Well, I ... I used to. But
we’d better go ahead with it.
I’ve got to.”

“No such thing. Permissible,
but not obligatory."

“But it was assumed. As a
matter of course. Anyway . . .
well, when that girl started mak-
ing passes at you, I thought you
could have just as much fun, or

AAAAZING STORIES

even more — she’s charming; a
real darling, isn’t she? — without
pairing with me, and then I had
to open my big mouth and be the
one to keep you from playing
games with anyone except me,
and I certainly am not going to
let you suffer . .

“Bunk!” Garlock snorted.
“Sheer flapdoodle! Pure psycho-
logical prop-wash, started and
maintained by men who are
either too weak to direct and
control their drives or who
haven’t any real work to occupy
their minds. It applies to many
men, of course, possibly to most.
It does not, however, apply to
all, and, it lacks one whole hell
of a lot of applying to me. Does
that make you feel better?”

“Oh, it does ... it does.
Thanks, Glee. You know, I like
you, a lot.”

“Do you? Kiss me.”

She did so.

“See?”

“You tricked me!”

“I did not. I want you to see
the truth and face it. Your
idealism is admirable, perma-
nent, and shatter-proof ; but
your starry-eyed schoolgirl’s
mawkishness is none of the
three. You’ll have to grow up,
some day. In my opinion, forcing
yourself to give up one of your
hardest-held ideals — virginity —
merely because of the utter bilge
that those idiot head-shrinkers
stuffed you with, is sheer, plain
idiocy. I suppose that makes you
like me even less, but I’m laying
it right on the line.”

“No . . . more. I’ll argue with
you, when we have time, about
some of your points, but the last
one — if it’s valid — has tremen-
dous force. I didn’t know men
felt that way. But no matter
what my feeling for you really
is. I’m really grateful to you for
the reprieve . . , and you know.
Glee, I'm pretty sure you’re go-
ing to get us back home. If any-
one can, you can.”

“I’m going to try to. Even if
I can’t, it will be Belle, not you,
that I’ll take for the long pull.
And not because you’d rather
have Jim — which you would, of
course . . .”

“To be honest, I think I
would.”

“Gertainly. He’s your type.
You’re not mine; Belle is. Well,
that buttons it up. Brownie, ex-
cept for one thing. To Jim and
Belle and everyone else, we’re
paired.”

“Of course. Urbanity, as well
as to present a united front to
any and all worlds.”

“Gheck. So watch your
shield.”

“I always do. That stuff is
’way, ’way down. I’m awfully
glad you called me ‘Brownie,’
Glee. I didn’t think you ever
would.”

“I didn’t expect to — but I nev-
er talked to a woman this way
before, either. Maybe it had a
mellowing effect.”

“You don’t need mellowing —
I do like you a lot, just exactly
as you are.”

“If true. I’m very glad of it.
But don’t strain yourself; and I

THE GALAXY PRIMES

mean that literally, not as sar-
casm.”

“I know. I’m not straining a
bit, and this’ll prove it.”

She kissed him again, and this
time it was a production.

“That was an eminently con-
vincing demonstration, Brownie,
but don’t do it too often.”

“I won’t.” She laughed, gayly
and happily. “If there’s any next
time, you’ll have to kiss me
first.”

She paused and sobered. “But
remember. If you should change
your mind, any time you really
want to ... to kiss me, come
right in. I won’t be as silly and
nervous and afraid as I was just
now. That’s a promise. Good
night. Glee.”

“Good night. Brownie.”

CHAPTER 2

N ext morning, Garlock was
the last one, by a fraction
of a minute, into the Main.
“Good morning, all,” he said,
with a slight smile.

“Huh? How come?” James
demanded, as all four started
toward the dining nook.

Garlock’s smile widened.
“Lola. She brought me a pot of
coffee and wouldn’t let me out
until I drank it.”

“ Brought?”

“Yeah. They haven’t read
their room-tapes yet, so they
don’t know that room-service is
practically unlimited.”

“Why didn’t I think of that
coffee business a couple of years
ago?”

“Well, why didn’t I think of
it myself, ten years ago?”

Belle’s eyes had been going
from one man to the other.
“Just what are you two talking
about? If it’s anybody’s business
except your ovni?”

“He is an early-morning
grouch,” James explained, as
they sat down at the table. “Not
fit to associate with man or
beast — not even his own dog, if
he had one — when he first gets
up. How come you were smart
enough to get the answer so
quick. Brownie?”

“Oh, the pattern isn’t too
rare.” She shrugged daintily,
sweeping the compliment aside
“Especially among men on big
jobs who work under tremen-
dous pressure.”

“Then how about Jim?” Belle
asked.

“Glee’s the Big Brain, not
me,” James said.

“You’re a lot Bigger Brain
than any of the men Lola’s talk-
ing about,” Belle insisted.

“That’s true,” Lola agreed,
“but Jim probably is — must be
— an icebox raider. Eats in the
middle of the night. Glee proba-
bly doesn’t. It’s a good bet that
he doesn’t nibble between meals
at all. Check, Glee?”

“Check. But what has an emp-
ty stomach got to do with the
case ?”

“Everything. Nobody knows
how. Lots of theories — enzymes,
blood sugar, endocrine balance,
what have you — but no proof.
It isn’t always true. However,
six or seven hours of empty

100

AMAZING STORIES

stomach, in a man who takes his
job to bed with him, is very apt
to uglify his pre-breakfast dis-
position.”

Breakfast over and out in the
Main :

“But when a man’s disposition
is ugly all the time, how can you
tell the difference?” Belle asked,
innocently.

“I’ll let that pass,” Garlock’s
smile disappeared, “because
we’ve got work to do. Have any
of you thought of any improve-
ment on Lola’s monogamous so-
ciety?”

No one had. In fact —

“There may be a loop-hole in
it,” Lola said, thoughtfully.
“Did any of you happen to notice
whether they know anything
about artificial insemination?”

“D’you think I’d stand for
thatV' Belle blazed, before Gar-
lock could begin to search his
mind. “I’d scratch anybody’s
eyes out — if you’d thought of
that idea as a woman instead of
as a near-Ph.D. in anthropology
you’d’ve thrown it into the con-
verter before it even hatched!”

“Invasion of privacy? That
covers it, of course, but I didn’t
think it would bother you a bit.”
Lola paused, studying the other
girl intently. “You’re quite a
problem yourself. Callous — ut-
terly savage humor— yet very
sensitive in some ways — fastidi-
ous . .

“I’m not on the table for
dissection I ” Belle snapped.
“Study me all you please, but
keep the notes in your notebook.
I’d suggest you study Glee.”

“Oh, I have been. He baffles
me, too. I’m not very good yet,
you . . .”

“That’s the unders . .

“Cut it!” Garlock ordered,
sharply. “I said we had work to
do. Jim, you’re hunting up the
nearest observatory.”

“How about transportation?
No teleportation?”

“Out. Rent a car or hire a
plane, or both. Pill your wallet
— better have too much money
than not enough. If you’re too
far away tonight to make it fea-
sible to come back here, send me
a flash. Brownie, you’ll work
this town first. Belle and I will
have to work in the library for
a while. We’ll all want to com-
pare notes tonight . . .”

“Yeah,” James said into the
pause, “I could tune in remote,
but I don’t know where I’ll be,
so it might not be so good.”

“Check. You can ’port, but be
damn sure nobody sees or senses
you doing it. That buttons it up,
I guess.”

James and Lola left the ship;
Garlock and Belle went into the
library.

“If I didn’t know you were
impotent, Clee,” Belle shivered
affectedly and began to laugh,
“I’d be scared to death to be
alone with you in this great big
spaceship. Lola hasn’t realized
yet what she really hatched out
— the screamingest screamer
ever pulled on anybody!”

"It isn’t that funny. You have
got a savage sense of humor.”

“Perhaps.” She shrugged her

THE GALAXY PRIMES

101

shoulders. “But you were on the
receiving end, which makes a
big difference. She’s a peculiar
sort of duck. Brainy, but imper-
sonal — academic. She knows all
the words and all their mean-
ings, all the questions and all
the answers, but she doesn't ap-
ply any of them to herself. She’s
always the observer, never the
participant. Pure egg-head . . .
pure? That’s it. She looks, acts,
talks, and thinks like a virgin
. . . Well, if that’s all, she isn’t
any — or is she ? Even though
you’ve started calling her
‘Brownie,’ like my now-tamed
tomcat, you might not . . .’’ She
stared at him.

“Go ahead. Probe.”

“Why waste energy trying to
crack a Prime’s shield? But just
out of curiosity, are you two
pairing, or not?”

“Tut-tut; don’t be inurbane.
Let’s talk about Jim instead. I
thought he’d be gibbering.”

“No, I’m working under dou-
ble wraps — full dampers. I don’t
want him in love with me. You
want to know why?”

“I think I know why.”

“Because having him mooning
around underfoot would weaken
the team and I want to get back
to Tellus.”

“I was wrong, then. I. thought
you were out after bigger
game.”

Belle’s face went stiff and
still. “What do you mean by
that?”

“Plain enough, I would think.
Wherever you are, you’ve got to
be the Boss. You’ve never been

in any kind of a party for fif-
teen minutes without taking it
over. When you snap the whip
everybody jumps — or else — and
you swing a wicked knife. For
your information I don’t jump, I
am familiar with knives, and
you will never run this project
or any part of it.”

Belle’s face set ; her eyes
hardened. “While we’re putting
out information, take note that
I’m just as good with actual
knives as with figurative ones.
If you’re still thinking of blis-
tering my fanny, don’t try it.
You’ll find a rawhide haft stick-
ing up out of one of those mus-
cles you’re so proud of — clear
enough Mr. Garlock.”

“Why don’t you talk sense, in-
stead of such yak-yak?”

“Huh?”

“I know you’re a Prime, too,
but don’t let it go to your head.
I’ve got more stuff than you
have, so you can’t Gunther me.
You weigh one thirty-five to my
two seventeen. I’m harder,
stronger, and faster than you
are. You’re probably a bit lim-
berer — not too much — but I’ve
forgotten more judo than you
ever will know. So what’s the
answer?”

Belle was breathing hard.
“Then why don’t you do it right
now?”

“Several reasons. I couldn’t
brag much about licking any-
body I outweigh by eighty-two
pounds. I can’t figure out your
logic — if any — ^but I’m pretty
sure now it wouldn’t do either

102

AMAZING STORIES

of US any good. Just the oppo-
site.”

“From your standpoint, would
that be bad?”

“What a hell of a logic! You
have got the finest brain of any
woman living. You’re stronger
than Jim is by a lot more than
the Prime-to-Operator ratio —
you’ve got more initiative, more
drive, more guts. You know as
well as I do what your brain
may mean before we get back.
Why in all hell don’t you start
using it?”

“You are complimenting me?”

“No. It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“What difference does that
make? Clee Garlock, I simply
can’t understand you at all.”

“That makes it mutual. I can’t
understand a geometry in which
the crookedest line between any
two given points is the best line.
Let’s get to work, shall we?”

“Uh-huh, let’s. One more bit
of information, though, first.
Any such idea as taking the
Project away from you simply
never entered my mind!” She
gave him a warm and friendly
smile as she walked over to the
file-cabinets.

For hours, then, they worked ;
each scanning tape after tape.
At mid-day they ate a light
lunch. Shortly thereafter, Gar-
lock put away his reader and all
his loose tapes. “Are you getting
anywhere. Belle? I’m not mak-
ing any progress.”

“Yes, but of course planets
are probably pretty much the
same everywhere — Tellus-type
ones, I mean, of course. Is all the

Xenology as cockeyed as I’m
afraid it must be?”

“Check. The one basic as-
sumption was that there are no
human beings other than Tel-
lurians. From that they derive
the secondary assumption that
humanoid types will be scarce.
From there they scatter out in
all directions. So I’ll have to roll
my own. I’ve got to see Atterlin,
anyway. I’ll be back for supper.
So long.”

At the Port Office, Grand
Lady Neldine met him even
more enthusiastically than be-
fore; taking both his hands and
pressing them against her firm,
almost-bare breasts. She tried
to hold back as Garlock led her
along the corridor.

“I have an explanation, and in
a sense an apology, for you.
Grand Lady Neldine, and for
you. Governor Atterlin,” he
thought carefully. “I would have
explained yesterday, but I had
no understanding of the situa-
tion here until our anthropolo-
gist, Lola Montandon, elucidated
it very laboriously to me. She
herself, a scientist highly train-
ed in that specialty, could grasp
it only by referring back to
somewhat similar situations
which may have existed in the
remote past — so remote a past
that the concept is known only
to specialists and is more than
half mythical, even to them.”

He went on to give in detail
the sexual customs, obligations,
and limitations of Lola’s purely
imaginary civilization.

THE GALAXY PRIMES

103

“Then it isn’t that you don’t
want to, but you can’t!” the
lady asked, incredulously.

“Mentally, I can have no de-
sire. Physically, the act is im-
possible,” he assured her.

“What a shame!” Her thought
was a peculiar mixture of dis-
appointment and relief: disap-
pointment in that she was not
to bear this man’s super-child;
relief in that, after all, she had
not personally failed — if she
couldn’t have this perfectly won-
derful man herself, no other
woman except his wife could
ever have him, either. But what
a shame to waste such a man
as that on any one woman! It
was really too bad.

“I see ... I see — wonderful!”
Atterlin’s thought was not at all
incredulous, but vastly awed. “It
is of course logical that as the
power of mind increases, physi-
cal matters become less and less
important. But you will have
much to give us; we may pei'-
haps have some small things to
give you. If we could visit your
Tellus, perhaps . . . ?”

“That also is impossible. We
four in the Pleiades are lost in
space. This is the first planet we
have visited on our first trial of
a new method — new to us, at
least — of interstellar travel. We
missed our objective, probably
by many millions of parsecs, and
it is quite possible that we four
will never be able to find our
way back. We are trying now',
by charting the galaxies
throughout billions of cubic par-
secs of space, to find merely the

direction in which our own gal-
axy lies.”

“What a concept! What stu-
pendous minds! But such im-
mense distances, sir . . . what can
you possibly be using for a
space-drive?”

“None, as you understand the
term. We travel by instantane-
ous translation, by means of
something we call ‘Gunther’ , . .
I am not at all sure that I can
explain it to you satisfactorily,
but I will try to do so, if you
wish.”

“Please do so, sir, by all
means.”

Garlock opened the highest
Gunther cells of his mind. There
was nothing as elementary as
telepathy, teleportation, tele-
kinesis, or the like; it was the
pure, raw Gunther of the Gun-
ther Drive, which even he him-
self made no pretense of under-
standing fully. He opened those
cells and pushed that knowledge
at the two Hodellian minds.

The result was just as instan-
taneous and just as catastrophic
as Garlock had expected. Both
blocks went up almost instantly.

“Oh, no!” Atterlin exclaimed,
his face turning white.

The girl shrieked once, cover-
ed her face with her hands, and
collapsed on the floor.

“Oh, I’m so sorry . . . excuse
my ignorance, please! Garlock
implored, as he picked the girl
up, carried her across the room
to a sofa, and assured himself
that she had not been really
hurt. She recovered quickly.

104

AMAZING STORIES

“I'm very sorry, Grand Lady
Neldine and Governor Atterlin,
but I didn’t know . . . that is, I
didn't realize . .

“You are trying to break it
gently.” Atterlin was both
shocked and despondent. “This
being the first planet you have
visited, you simply did not real-
ize how feeble our minds really
are.”

“Oh, not at all, really, sir and
lady.” Garlock began deftly to
repair the morale he had shat-
tered. “Merely younger. With
your system of genetics, so much
more logical and efficient than
our strict monogamy, your race
will undoubtedly make more
progress in a few centuries than
we made in many millennia. And
in a few centuries more you will
pass us — will master this only
partially-known Gunther Drive.

“Esthetically, Lady Neldine, I
would like very much to father
you a child.” He allowed his
coldly unmoved gaze to survey
her charms. “I am sorry indeed
that it cannot be. I trust that
you. Governor Atterlin, will be
kind enough to spread word of
our physical shortcomings, and
so spare us further embarrass-
ment?”

“Not shortcomings, sir, and,
I truly hope, no embarrass-
ment," Atterlin protested. “We
are immensely glad to have seen
you, since your very existence
gives us so much hope for the
future. I will spread word, and
every Hodellian will do whatever
he can to help you in your
quest.”

“Thank you, sir and lady,”
and Garlock took his leave.

“What an act, my male-look-
ing but impotent darling!” came
Belle’s clear, incisive thought,
bubbling with unrestrained mer-
riment. “For our Doctor Gar-
lock, the Prime Exponent and
First Disciple of Truth, what an
act! Esthetically, he’d like to fa-
ther her a child, it says here in
fine print — Boy, if she only
knew! One tiny grain of truth
and she’d chase you from here
to Andromeda! Glee, I swear
this thing is going to kill me
yet!”

“Anything that would do that
I’m very much in favor of!”
Garlock growled, the thought and
snapped up his shield.

This one was, quite definitely.
Belle’s round.

Garlock took the Hodellian
equivalent of a bus to the center
of the city, then set out aimless-
ly to walk. The buildings and
their arrangement, he noted —
not much to his surprise now —
were not too different from
those of the cities of Earth.

With his guard down to about
the sixth level, highly receptive
but not at all selective, he stroll-
ed up one street and down an-
other. He was not attentive to
detail yet; he was trying to get
the broad aspects, the “feel” of
this hitherto unknown civiliza-
tion.

The ether was practically sat-
urated with thought. Apparent-
ly this was the afternoon rush
hour, as the sidewalks were

THE GALAXY PRIMES

105

crowded with people and the
streets were full of cars. It did
not seem as though anyone,
-whether in the buildings, on the
sidewalks, or in the cars, was
doing any blocking at all. If
there were any such things as
.secrets on Hodell, they were
scarce. Each person, man, wom-
an, or child, went about his own
business, radiating full blast. No
one paid any attention to the
thoughts of anyone else except
in the case of couples or groups,
the units of which were engaged
in conversation. It reminded
Garlock of a big Tellurian party
when the punch-bowls were run-
ning low — everybody talking at
the top of his voice and nobody
listening.

This whole gale of thought
was blowing over Garlock’s re-
ceptors like a Great Plains wind
over miles-wide fields of corn.
He did not address anyone di-
rectly; no one addressed him.
At first, quite a few young wom-
en, at sight of his unusual
physique, had sent out tentative
feelers of thought ; and some
men had wondered, in the same
tentative and indirect fashion,
who he was and where he came
from. However, when the infor-
mation he had given Atterlin
spread throughout the city —
and it did not take long — no one
paid any more attention to him
than they did to each other.

Probing into and through va-
rious buildings, he learned that
groups of people were quitting
work at intervals of about fif-
teen minutes. There were

thoughts of tidying up desks ; of
letting the rest of this junk go
until tomorrow ; of putting away
and/or covering up office ma-
chines of various sorts. There
were thoughts of powdering
noses and of repairing make-up.

He pulled in his receptors and
scanned the crowded ways for
guardians — he’d have to call
them that until either he or Lola
found out their real name. Same
as at the airport — the more peo-
ple, the more guardians. What
were they? How? And why?

He probed ; carefully but thor-
oughly. When he had talked to
the Arpal«ne he had read him
easily enough, but here there
was nothing whatever to read.
The creature simply was not
thinking at all. But that didn’t
make sense ! Garlock tuned, first
down, then up; and finally, at
the very top of his range, he
found something, but he did not
at first know what it was. It
seemed to be a mass-detector . . .
no, two of them, paired and bal-
anced. Oh, that was it ! One
tuned to humanity, one to the
other guardians — balanced
across a sort of bridge — that
was how they kept the ratio so
constant! But why? There seem-
ed to be some wide-range recep-
tors there, too, but nothing
seemed to be coming in . . .

While he was still studying
and still baffled, some kind of
stimulus, which was so high and
so faint and so alien that he
could neither identify nor in-
terpret it, touched the Arpa-

106

AMAZING STORIES

lone’s far-flung receptors. In-
stantly the creature jumped, his
powerful, widely-bowed legs
sending him high above the
heads of the crowd and, it seem-
ed to Garlock, directly toward
him. Simultaneously there waS
an insistent, low-pitched, whis-
tling scream, somewhat like the
noise made by an airplane in a
no-power dive ; and Garlock saw,
out of the corner of one eye, a
yellowish something flashing
downward through the air.

At the same moment the wom-
an immediately in front of Gar-
lock stifled a scream and jumped
backward, bumping into him
and almost knocking him down.
He staggered, caught his bal-
ance, and automatically put his
arm around his assailant, to
keep her from falling to the
sidewalk.

In the meantime the guard-
ian, having landed very close to
the spot the woman had occupied
a moment before, leaped again;
this time vertically upward. The
thing, whatever it was, was now
braking frantically with wings,
tail, and body; trying madly to
get away. Too late. There was a
bone-crus»hing impact as the two
bodies came together in mid-air ;
a jarring thud as the two crea-
tures, inextricably intertwined,
struck the pavement as one.

The thing varied in color,
Garlock now saw, shading from
bright orange at the head to pale
yellow at the tail. It had a sav-
agely-tearing curved beak; tre-
mendously powerful wings; its

short, thick legs ended in hawk-
like talons.

The guardian’s bowed legs
had already immobilized the
yellow wings by clamping them
solidly against the yellow body.
His two lower arms were hold-
ing the frightful talons out of
action. His third hand gripped
the orange throat, his fourth
was exerting tremendous force
against the jointure of neck and
body. The neck, originally short,
was beginning to stretch.

For several seconds Garlock
had been half-conscious that his
accidental companion was try-
ing, with more and more energy,
to disengage his encircling left
arm from her waist. He wrench-
ed his attention away from the
spectacular fight — to which no
one else, not even the near-
victim, had paid the slightest
attention — and now saw that he
had his arm around the bare
waist of a statuesque matron
whose entire costume would
have made perhaps half of a
Tellurian sun-suit. He dropped
his arm with a quick and abject
apology.

“I should apologize to you in-
stead, Captain Garlock,” she
thought, with a wide and friend-
ly smile, “for knocking you
down, and I thank you for catch-
ing me before I fell. I should not
have been startled, of course. I
would not have been, except that
this is the first time that I, per-
sonally, have been attacked.”

“But what are they?” Garlock
blurted.

“I don’t know.” The woman

107

THE GALAXY PRIMES

turned her head and glanced, in
complete disinterest, at the two
furiously - battling creatures.
Garlock knew now that this was
the first time, except for that in-
stantly-dismissed thrill of sur-
prise at being the actual target
of an attack, that she had
thought of either of them.
“Orange-yellow? It could be a
. . . a fumapty, perhaps, but I’ve
no idea, really. You see, such
things are none of our busi-
ness.”

She thought at him, a half-
shrug, half-grimace of mild dis-
taste — not at the personal con-
tact with the man nor at the
savage duel; but at even think-
ing of either the guardian or the
yellow monster — and walked
away into the crowd.

Garlock’s attention flashed
back to the fighters. The yellow
thing’s neck had been stretched
to twice its natural length and
the guardian had eaten almost
through it. There was a terrific
crunch, a couple of smacking,
gobbling swallows, and head
parted from body. The orange
beak still clashed open and shut,
however, and the body still
thrashed violently.

Shifting his grips, the guard-
ian proceeded to tear a hole into
his victim’s body, just below its
breast-bone. Thrusting two arms
into the opening, he yanked out
two organs — one of which. Gar-
lock thought, could have been
the heart — and ate them both ; if
not with extreme gusto, at least
in a workmanlike and thorough-
ly competent fashion. He then

picked up the head in one hand,
grabbed the tip of a wing with
another, and marched up the
street for half a block, dragging
the body behind him.

He lifted a manhole cover
with his two unoccupied hands,
dropi)ed the remains down the
hole thus exposed, and let the
cover slam back into place. He
then squatted down, licked him-
self meticulously clean with a
long, black, extremely agile
tongue, and went on about his
enigmatic business quite as
though nothing had happened.

Garlock strolled around a few
minutes longer, but could not re-
capture any interest in the do-
ings of the human beings around
him. He had filed away every de-
tail of what had just happened,
and it had so many bizarre as-
pects that he could not think of
anything else. Wherefore he
flagged down a “taxi” and was
taken out to the Pleiades. Belle
and Lola were in the Main.

“I saw the damndest thing.
Glee!” Lola exclaimed. “I’ve
been gnawing my fingernails off
up to the knuckles, waiting for
you!”

Lola’s experience had been
very similar to Garlock’s own,
except in that her monster was
an intense green in color and
looked something like a bat
about four feet long, with six-
inch canine teeth and several
stingers . . .

“Did you find out the name of
the thing?” Garlock asked.

“No. I asked half-a-dozen peo-

108

AAUZING STORIES

pie, but nobody would even lis-
ten to me except one half-grown
boy, and the best he could do
was that it might be something
he had heard another boy say
somebody had told him might be
a ‘lemart.’ And as to those low-
er-case Arpalones, the best I
could dig out of anybody was
just ‘guardians.’ Did you do any
better?”

“No, I didn’t do as well,” and
he told the girls about his own
experience.

“But I didn’t find any detec-
tors or receptors. Glee,” Lola
frowned. “Where were they?”

“ ’Way up — up here,” he
showed her. “I’ll make a full
tape tonight on everything I
found out about the guardians
and the Arpalones — besides my
regular report, I mean — since
they’re yours, and you can make
me one about your friend the
green bat . . .”

“Hey, I like that!” Belle broke
in. “That could be taken amiss,
you know, by such a sensitive
soul as I!”

“Check.” Garlock chuckled.
“I’ll have to file that one, in
case I want to use it sometime.
How’re you coming. Belle?”

“Nice!” Belle’s voracious
mind had been so busy absorb-
ing new knowledge that she had
temporarily forgotten about her
fight with her captain. “I’m just
about done here. I’ll be ready
tomorrow, I think, to visit their
library and tape up some planet-
ological and planetographical —
notice how insouciantly I toss

off those two-credit words? —
data on this here planet Hodell."

“Good going. You’ve been lis-
tening to this stuff Lola and I
were chewing on — does any of it
make sense to you?”

“It does not. I never heard
anything to compare with it.”

“Excuse me for changing the
subject,” Lola put in, plaintive-
ly, “but when, if ever, do we
eat? Do we have to wait until
that confounded James boy gets
back from wherever it was he
went?”

“If you’re hungry, we’ll eat
now.”

“Hungry? Look!” Lola turned
herself sidewise, placed one hand
in the small of her back, and
pressed hard with the other her
flat, taut belly. “See? Only a
couple of inches from belt-buckle
to backbone — dangerously close
to the point of utter collapse.”

“You poor, abused little
thing!” Garlock laughed and all
three crossed the room to the
dining alcove. While they were
still ordering, James appeared
beside them.

“Find out anything?” Garlock
asked.

“Yes and no. Yes, in that they
have an excellent observatory,
with a hundred-eighty-inch re-
flector, on a mountain only sev-
enty-five miles from here. No,
in that I didn’t find any duplica-
tion of nebulary configurations
with the stuff I had with me.
However, it was relatively
coarse. Tomorrow I’ll take a lot
of fine stuff along. It’ll take
some time — a full day, at least.”

THE GALAXY PRIMES

109

“I expected that. Good going,
Jim!”

All four ate heartily, and,
after eating, they taped up the
day’s reports. Then, tired from
their first real day’s work in
weeks, all went to their rooms.

A few minutes later, Garlock
tapped lightly at Lola’s door.

“Come in.” She stiffened in-
voluntarily, then relaxed and
smiled. “Oh, yes. Glee; of course.
You’re . . .”

“No, I’m not. I’ve been doing
a lot of thinking about you since
last night, and I may have come
up with an answer or two. Also,
Belle knows we aren’t pairing,
and if we don’t hide behind a
screen at least once in a while,
she’ll know we aren’t going to.”

“Screen?”

“Screen. Didn’t you know
these four private rooms are
solid? Haven’t you read your
house-tape yet?”

“No. But do you think Belle
would actually peek?”

“Do you think she wouldn’t?”

“Well, I don’t like her very
much, but I wouldn’t think she
would do anything like that,
Glee. It isn’t urbane.”

“She isn’t urbane, either,
whenever she thinks it might be
advantageous not to be.”

“What a terrible thing to
say!”

“Take it from me, if Belle
Bellamy doesn’t know every-
thing that goes on it isn’t from
lack of trying. You wouldn’t
know about room service, either,
then — better scan that tape be-

fore you go to sleep tonight —
what’ll you have in the line of a
drink to while away enough
time so she will know we’ve been
playing games?”

“Ginger ale, please.”

“I’ll have ginger beer. You do
it like so.” He slid a panel aside,
his fingers played briefly on a
typewriter-like keyboard. Drinks
and ice appeared. “Anything you
want — details of the tape.”

He lighted two cigarettes,
handed her one, stirred his
drink. “Now, fair lady — or
should I say beauteous dark
lady? — we will follow the pre-
cept of that immortal Ghinese
philosopher, Ghin On.”

“You are a Prime Operator,
aren’t you?” She laughed, but
sobered quickly. “I’m worried.
You said I flaunted virginity
like a banner, and now Belle . . .
What am I doing wrong?”

“There’s a lot wrong. Not so
much what you’re doing as what
you aren’t doing. You’re too
aloof — detached — egg-headish.
You know the score, words and
music, but you don’t sing. All
you do is listen. Belle thinks
you’re not only a physical vir-
gin, but a psychic-blocked prude.
I know better. You’re so full of
conflict between what you want
to do — ^what you know is right
— and what those three-cell-
brained nincompoops made you
think you ought to do that you
have got no more degrees of
freedom than a piston-rod. You
haven’t been yourself for a min-
ute since you came aboard.
Gheck?”

110

AMAZING STORIES

“You have been thinking,
haven’t you? You may be right;
except that it’s been longer than
that . . . ever since the first
preliminaries, I think. But what
can I do about it, Clee?”

“Contact. Three-quarters full,
say; enough for me to give you
what I think is the truth.”

“But you said you never went
screens down with a woman?”

“There’s a first time for
everything. Come in.”

She did so, held contact for
almost a minute, then pulled
herself loose.

“Ug-gh-gh.” She shivered.
“I’m glad I haven’t got a mind
like that.”

“And the same from me to
you. Of course the real truth
may lie somewhere in between. I
may be as far off the beam on
one side as you are on the
other.”

“I hope so. But it cleared-
things up no end — it untied a
million knots. Even that other
thing — brotherly love ? It’s a
very nice concept — you see, I
never had any brothers.”

“That’s probably one thing
that was the matter with you.
Nothing warmer than that, cer-
tainly, and never will be.”

“And I suppose you got the
thought — it must have jumped
up and smacked you — ” Lola’s
hot blush was visible even
through her heavy tan, “how
many times I’ve felt like run-
ning my fingers up and down
your ribs and grabbing a hand-
ful of those terrific muscles of

yours, just to see if they’re as
hard as they look?”

“I’m glad you brought that
up ; I don’t know whether I
would have dared to or not.
You’ve got to stop acting like a
Third instead of an Operator;
and you’ve got to stop acting as
though you had never been with-
in ten feet of me. Now's as good
a time as any.” He took off his
shirt and struck a strong-man’s
pose. “Come ahead.”

“By golly. I’m going to!”
Then, a moment later, “Why,
they’re even harder'. How do
you, a scientist, psionicist, and
scholar, keep in such hard shape
as that?”

“An hour a day in the gym,
three hundred sixty-five days a
year. Many are better — but a
hell of a lot are worse.”

“I’ll say.” She finished her
ginger ale, sat down in her
chair, leaned back and put her
legs up on the bed. “That was a
relief of tension if there ever
was one. I haven’t felt so good
since they picked me as home-
town candidate — and that was a
mighty small town and eight
months ago. Bring on your
dragons, Clee, and I’ll slay ’em
far and wide. But I can’t actual-
ly be like she is . . ."

“Thank God for that. Deliver
me from two such pretzel-bend-
ers aboard one ship.”

“. . . but I could have been a
pretty good actress, I think.”

“Correction, please. ‘Outstand-
ing’ is the word.”

“Thank you, kind sir. And
women — men, too, of course — do

THE GALAXY PRIMES

111

bring up certain memories, to

. . . to . .

“To roll ’em around on their
tongues and give their taste-
buds a treat.”

“Exactly. So where I don’t
have any appropriate actual
memories to bring up, I’ll make
like an actress. Check?”

“Good girl! Now you’re roll-
ing — we’re in like Flynn. Well,
we’ve been in screen long
enough, I guess. Fare thee well,
little sister Brownie, until we
meet again.” He tossed the re-
mains of their refreshments,
trays and all, into the chute,
picked up his shirt, and started
out.

“Put it on, Clee!” she whis-
pered, inten.sely.

“Why?” He grinned cheerful-
ly. “It’d look still better if I
peeled down to the altogether.”

“You’re incorrigible,” she
said, but her answering grin
was wide and perfectly natural.
“You know, if I had had a broth-
er something like you it would
have saved me a lot of wear and
tear. I’ll see you in the morning
before breakfast.”

And she did. They strolled to-
gether to breakfast; not holding
hands, but with hip almost
touching hip. Relaxed, friendly,
on very cordial and satisfactory
terms. Lola punched breakfast
orders for them both. Belle
drove a probe, which bounced —
Lola’s screen was tight, althougTi
her brown eyes were innocent
and bland.

But during the meal, in re-

sponse to a double-edged, wick-
edly-barbed remark of Belle’s, a
memory flashed into being above
Lola’s shield. It was the veriest
flash, instantly suppressed. Her
eyes held clear and steady; if
she blushed at all it did not
show.

Belle caught it, of course, and
winked triumphantly at Garlock.
She knew, now, what she had
wanted to know. And, Prime
Operator though he was, it was
all he could do to make no sign ;
for that fleetingly-revealed mem-
ory was a perfect job. He would
not have — could not have — ques-
tioned it himself, except for one
highly startling fact. It was of
an event that had not happened
and never would!

And after breakfast, at some
distance from the others, “That
is my girl. Brownie! You’re fir-
ing on all forty barrels. You’re
an Operator, all right; and it
takes a damn good one to lie like
that with her mind!”

“Thanks to you, Clee. And
thanks a million, really. I’m me
again — I think.”

Then, since Belle was looking,
she took him by both ears, pull-
ed his head down, and kissed
him lightly on the lips. The spon-
taneity and tenderness were per-
fect at that moment. Clee’s
appreciation was obvious.

“I know I said you’d have to
kiss me next time,” Lola said,
very low, “but this act needs
just this much of an extra touch.
Anyway, such little, tiny, sister-
ly ones as this, and out in public,
don’t count.”

112

AMAZING STORIES

CHAPTER 3

L ola and Garlock went to
town in the same taxi. As
they were about to separate,
Garlock said:

“I don’t like those hell-divers,
yellow, green, or any other col-
or; and you. Brownie, are very
definitely not expendable. Are
you any good at mind-bomb-
ing?”

“Why, I never heard of such a
thing.”

“You isolate a little energy in
the Op field, remembering of
course, that you’re handling a
hundred thousand gunts. Trans-
pose it into platinum or uranium
— anything good and heavy. For
one of these monsters you’d
need two or three micrograms.
For a battleship, up to maybe a
gram or so. ’Port it to the exact
place you want it to detonate.
Reconvert and release instanta-
neously. One-hundred-percent-
conversion atomic bomb, tailored
exactly to fit the job. Very effec-
tive.”

“It would be. My God, Glee,
can you do thatt”

“Sure — so can you. Any Op-
erator can.”

“Well, I won’t. I never will.
Besides, I'd probably kill too
many people, besides the mon-
ster. No, I’ll ’port back to the
Main if anything attacks me.
I’m chain lightning at that.”

“Do that, then. And if any-
thing very unusual happens give
me a flash.”

“I’ll do that. ’Bye, Glee.” She
turned to the left. He walked

straight on, toward the business
center, to resume his study at
the point where he had left off
the evening before.

For over an hour he wandered
aimlessly about the city; receiv-
ing, classifying, and filing away
information. He saw several
duels between guardians and
yellow and green-bat monsters,
to none of which he paid any
more attention than did the peo-
ple around him. Then a third
kind of enemy appeared — two of
them at once, flying wing-and-
wing — and Garlock stopped and
watched.

Vivid, clear-cut stripes of red
and black, even on the tremen-
dously long, strong wings. Dis-
tinctly feline as to heads, teeth,
and claws. While they did not at
all closely resemble flying saber-
toothed tigers, that was the first
impression that leaped into Gar-
lock’s mind.

Two bow-legged guardians
came leaping as usual, but one
of them was a fraction of a sec-
ond too late. That fraction was
enough. While the first guardian
was still high in air, grappling
with one tiger, the other swung
on a dime — the blast of air from
his right wing blowing people in
the crowd below thither and yon
and knocking four of them flat —
and took the guardian’s head off
his body with one savage swipe
of a frightfully-armed paw. Dis-
regarding the carcass both at-
tackers whirled sharply at the
second guardian, meeting him in
such fashion that he could not
come to firm grips with either of

1 13

THE GALAXY PRIMES

them, and that battle was very
brief indeed. More and more
guardians were leaping in from
all directions, however, and the
two tigers were forced to the
ground and slaughtered.

Since six guardians had been
killed, eight guardians marched
up the street, dragging grisly
loads. Eight bodies, friend and
foe alike, were dumped into a
manhole; eight creatures squat-
ted down and cleaned themselves
meticulously before resuming
their various patrols.

Ten or fifteen minutes later,
Garlock felt Lola’s half-excited,
half-frightened thought. “Glee,
do you read me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“There’s something coming
that’s certainly none of my busi-
ness — maybe not even yours.”

“Coming,” and with the
thought he was there. “Where?”

She pointed a thought, he fol-
lowed it. Far away yet, but com-
ing fast, was an immense flock
of flying tigers!

Lola licked her lips. “I’m go-
ing home, if you don’t mind.”

“Beat it.”

She disappeared.

“Jim!” Garlock thought.
“Where are you?”

“Observatory. Need me?”

“Yes. Bombing. Two point
four microgram loads. Focus
spot on my right — teleport in.”

“Coming in on your right.”

“And I on your left!” Belle’s
thought drove in as he had never
before felt it driven. Being a
Prime, she did not need a focus

spot and appeared the veriest
instant later than did James.

“Can you bomb?” Garlock
snapped.

“What do you think?” she
snapped back.

A moment of flashing thought
and the three Tellurians disap-
peared, materializing five hun-
dred feet in air, two hundred
feet ahead of the van of that
horrible flight of monsters,
drifting before it.

Belle got in the first shot. Not
only did the victim disappear —
a couple of dozen around it were
torn to fragments and the force
of the blast staggered all three
Tellurians.

“Damn it. Belle, cut down or
get to hell out!” Garlock yelped.
“I said two point four micro-
grams, not milligrams. Just kill
’em, don’t scatter ’em all over
hell’s half acre — less mess to
clean up and I don’t want you to
kill people down below. Especial-
ly I don’t want you to kill us—
not even yourself.”

“ ’Scuse, please, I guess I was
a bit enthusiastic in my weigh-
ing.”

There began a series of muf-
fled explosions along the front;
each followed by the plunge of
a tiger-striped body to the
ground. Faster and faster the
explosions came as the Operator
and the Primes learned the rou-
tine and the rhythm of the job.

Nor were they long alone. The
roaring, screaming howl of jets
came up from behind them ; four
Arpalones appeared at their left,
strung out along the front. Each

114

AMAZING STORIES

held an extraordinarily heavy-
duty blaster in each of his four
hands; sixteen terrific weapons
were hurling death into the fly-
ing horde.

“Slide over, Terrestrials,”
came a calm thought. “You three
take their left fi’ont, we’ll take
their right and center.”

As they obeyed the instruc-
tions, “They don’t give a damn
where the pieces fly!” Belle pro-
tested. “Why should v/e be fussy
about their street-cleaning de-
partment? I’m starting to use
flves.”

“Okay. We’ll have to hit 'em
harder, anyway, to keep up. Five
or maybe six — just be damn
sure not to knock us or the Ar-
palones out of the air.”

Carnage went on. The battle-
front, while inside the city lim-
its, was now almost stationary.

“Ha! Help — I hear footsteps
approaching on jet-back,” Gar-
lock announced. “Give ’em hell,
boys — shovel on the coal!”

A flight of fighter-planes,
eight abreast and wing-tips al-
most touching, howled close ov-
erhead and along the line of in-
vasion. They could not fire, of
course, until they reached the
city limits. There they opened
up as one, , and the air below be-
came literally filled with falling
monsters. Some had only broken
wings ; some were dead, but
more or less whole; many were
blown to unrecognizable bits and
scraps of flesh.

Another flight screamed into
place immediately behind the

first; then another and another
and another until six flights had
passed. Then came four helicop-
ters, darting and hovering,
whose gunners picked off indi-
vidually whatever survivors had
managed to escape all six waves
of fighters.

“That’s better,” came a
thought from the Arpalone near-
est Garlock. “Situation under
control, thanks to you Telluri-
ans. Supposed to be two squads
of us gunners, but the other
squad was busy on another job.
Without you, this could have
developed into a fairly nasty lit-
tle infection. I don’t know what
you’re doing or how you’re do-
ing it — we were told that you
weren’t like any other humans,
and how true thut is — but I’m
in favor of it. I thought there
were four of you?”

“One of us is not a fighter.”

“Oh. You can knock off now,
if you like. We’ll polish off.
Thanks much.”

“But don’t the boys on the
ground need some help?”

“The Arpales? Those idiots
you have been thinking of as
‘guardians’? W’hich they are, of
course. Uh-uh. Besides, we’re
air-fighters. Ground work is
none of our business. Also, these
guns would raise altogether too
much hell down there. Bound to
hit some humans.”

“Check. Those Arpales aren’t
very intelligent, you Arpalones
are extremely so. Any connec-
tion?”

“ ’Way back, they say. Com-
mon ancestry, and doing two

THE GALAXY PRIMES

115

parts of the same job. Killing
these fumapties and lemarts and
sencors and what-have-you. I
don’t know what humanity’s job
is and don’t give a damn. Prob-
ably fairly important, some way
or other, though, since it’s our
job to see that the silly, gutless
things keep on living. We have
nothing to do with ’em, ever.
The only reason I’m talking to
you is you’re not really human
at all. You’re a fighter, too, and
a damn good one.”

‘T know what you mean,” and
the three Tellurians turned
their attention downward to the
scene on the ground.

The heaviest fighting had
been over a large park at the
city’s edge, which was now liter-
ally a shambles. Very few people
were to be seen, and those few
more moving unconcernedly
away from the center of vio-
lence. All over the park thou-
sands of Arpales were fighting
furiously and hundreds of them
were dying. For hundreds of the
sencors had suffered only w’ing
injuries, the long fall to ground
had not harmed them further,
and their tremendous fighting
ability had been lessened very
little if at all.

“But I’d think, just for effi-
ciency if nothing else,” Garlock
argued, “you’d support the Ar-
pales some way. Lighter guns or
something. Why, thousands of
them must have been killed, just
in this last hour or so.”

“Yeah, but that’s their busi-
ness. They breed fast and die

fast. Everything has to balance,
you know.”

“Perhaps so.” Garlock was si-
lenced, if not convinced. “Well,
it’s about over. What happens to
the bodies they’re dumping
down manholes? They can’t go
down a sewer that way?”

“Oh, you didn’t know? Food.”

“Food? For what?”

“The Arpales and us, of
course.”

“What? You don’t mean — you
can’t mean that they — and by
your thought, you Arpalones, too
— are cannibals!”

“Cannibals? Explain, please?
Oh, eaters-of-our-own-species. Of
course — certainly. Why not?”

“Why, self-respect . . . com-
mon decency . . . respect for
one’s fellow-man . . . family
ties . . .” Garlock was flounder-
ing ; to be called upon to explain
his ingrained antipathy to such
a custom was new to his experi-
ence.

"You are silly. Worse, squeam-
ish. Worst, supremely illogical.”
The Arpalone paused, then went
on as though trying to educate
a hopelessly illogical inferior,
“While we do not kill Arpales
purposely — except when they
over-breed — why waste good
meat as fertilizer? If a diet is
wholesome, nutritious, well-bal-
anced, and tasty, what shred of
difference can it possibly make
what its ingredients once
were?”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Gar-
lock quit.

Belle agreed. “This whole deal
makes me sick at the stomach

116

AMAZING STORIES

and I think my face is turning
green too. But I’m devilishly and
gleefully glad, Clee, that I was
here to hear somebody give you
cards, spaces, and big casino and
still beat the lights and liver out
of you at your own game of cold-
blooded logic!”

“We gunners must go now.
Would you like to come along
with us and see the end of this
particular breeding-hole of sen-
cors?”

At high speed the seven flew
back along the line of advance
of the flying^tiger horde; across
a barren valley, toward and to
the side of a mountain.

An area almost a mile square
of that mountain’s side was a
burned, blasted, churned, pock-
ed, cratered and flaming waste;
and the four helicopters were
still working on it. High-energy
beams blasted, fairly volatilizing
the ground as they struck in as
deep as they could be driven.
High-explosive shells bored deep
and detonated, hurling shattered
rock and soil and yellow smoke
far and wide; establishing new
craters by destroying the ones
existing a moment before.

While it seemed incredible
that any living thing larger than
a microbe could emerge under
its own power from such a hell
of energy, many flying tigers
did ; apparently being blown
aloft along with the hitherto un-
disturbed volume of soil in
which the creatures had been.
Most of them were not fully
grown; some were so immature

as to be unrecognizable to an un-
trained eye; but from all four
helicopters hand-guns snapped
and cracked. Nothing — ^but noth-
ing — was leaving that field of
carnage alive.

“What are you gunners sup-
posed to be doing here ?” Garlock
asked.

“Oh, the ’copters will be leav-
ing pretty soon — they’ve got
other places to go. But they
won’t get them all — some of the
hatches are too deep — so us four
gunners will stick around for
two-three days to kill the late-
hatchers as they come out.”

“I see,” and Garlock probed.
“There are four cells they won’t
reach. Shall I bomb ’em out?”

“I’ll ask.” The slitted red eyes
widened and he sent a call.
“Commander Knahr, can you
hop over here a minute? I want
you to meet these things we’ve
been hearing about. They look
human, but they really aren't.
They’re killers, with more stuff
and more brains than any of us
ever heard of.”

Another Arpalone appeared,
indistinguishable to Tellurian
eyes from any one of the others.

“But why do you want to mix
into something that’s none of
your business?” Knahr was
neither officious nor condemna-
tory. He simply could not under-
stand.

“Since you have no concept of
our quality of curiosity, just call
it education. The question is, do
or do you not want those four
deeply-buried cells blasted out of
existence ?”

THE GALAXY PRIMES

117

“Of course I do.”

“Okay. You’ve got all of ’em
you’re going to get. Tell your
’copters to give us about five
miles clearance, and we’ll all fall
back, too.”

They drew back, and there
were four closely-spaced explo-
sions of such violence that one
raggedly mushroom - shaped
cloud went into the stratosphere
and one huge, ragged crater
yawned where once churned
ground had been.

“But that’s atomic Knahr
gasped the thought. “Fall-out!”

“No fall-out. Complete conver-
sion. Have you got a counter?”

They had. They tested. There
was nothing except the usual
background count.

“There’s no life left under-
ground, so you needn’t keep this
squad of gunners tied up here,”
Garlock told the commander.
“Before we go, I want to ask a
question. You have visitors once
in a while from other solar sys-
tems, so you must have a faster-
than-light drive. Can you tell me
anything about it?”

“No. Nothing like that would
be any of my business.” Knahr
and the four gunners disappear-
ed ; the helicopters began to lum-
ber away.

“Well, that helps — I don’t
think,” Garlock thought, glumly.
“What a world! Back to the
Main?”

In the Main, after a long and
fruitless discussion, Garlock
called Governor Atterlin, who
did not know anything about a

118

faster-than-light drive, either.
There was one, of course, since
it took only a few days or a few
weeks to go from one system to
another; but Hodell didn’t have
any such ships. No ordinary
planet did. They were owned and
operated by people who called
themselves “Engineers.” He had
no idea where the Engineers
came from; they didn’t say.

Garlock then tried to get in
touch with the Arpalone Inspec-
tor who had checked the Plei-
ades in, and could not find out
even who it had been. The In-
spector then on duty neither
knew or cared anything about
either faster-than-light drives
or Engineers. Such things were
none of his business.

“What difference would it
make, anyway?” James asked.
“No drive that takes ‘a few
weeks’ for an intra-galaxy hop
is ever going to get us back to
Tellus.”

“True enough; but if there is
such a thing I want to know how
it works. How are you coming
with your calculations?”

“I’ll finish up tomorrow easily
enough.”

Tomorrow came, and James
finished up, but he did not find
any familiar pattern of Galactic
arrangement. The other three
watched James set up for an-
other try for Earth.

“You don’t think we’ll ever
get back, do you. Glee?” Belle
asked.

“Right away, no. Some day,
yes. I’ve got the germ of an idea.
Maybe three or four more hops

AMAZING STORIES

will give me something to work
on.

“I hope so,” James said, “be-
cause here goes nothing,” and
he snapped the red switch.

It was not nothing. Number
Two was another guardian In-
spector and another planet very
much like Hodell. It proved to
be so far from both Earth and
Hodell, however, that no useful
similarities were found in any
two of the three sets of charts.

Number Three was equally
unproductive of helpful results.
James did, however, improve his
technique of making galactic
charts; and he and Garlock de-
signed and built a high-speed
comparator. Thus the time re-
quired per stop was reduced
from days to hours.

Number Four produced a sur-
prise. When Garlock touched the
knob of the testing-box he yank-
ed his hand away before it had
really made contact. It was like
touching a high-voltage wire.

“You are incompatible with
our humanity and must not
land,” the Inspector ruled.

“Suppose we blast you and
your jets out of the air and land
anyway?” Garlock asked.

“That is perhaps possible,”
the Inspector agreed, equably
enough. “We are not invincible.
However, it would do you no
good. If any one of you four
leaves that so-heavily-insulated
vessel in the atmosphere of this
planet you will die. Not quickly,
but slowly and with difficulty.”

“But you haven’t tested me!”

Belle said. “Do you mean they’ll
attack us on sight?”

“There is no need to test more
than one. Anyone who could live
near any of you could not live
on this planet. Nor will they at-
tack you. Don’t you know
what the thought ‘incompatible’
means ?”

“With us it does not mean
death.”

“Here it does, since it refers
to life forces. The types are
mutually, irreconcilably antag-
onistic. Your life forces are very
strong. Thus, no matter how
peaceable your intentions may
be, many of our human beings
would die before you would, but
you will not live to get back to
your ship if you land it and
leave its protective insulation.”

“Why? What is it? How does
it work?” Belle demanded.

“It is not my business to
know; only to tell. I have told.
You will go away now.”

Garlock’s eyes narrowed in
concentration. “Belle, can you
blast? I mean, could you if you
wanted to?”

“Certainly . . . why, I don’t
want to. Glee!”

“I don’t, either — and I’ll file
that one away to chew on when
I’m hungry some night, too.
Take her up, Jim, and try an-
other shot.”

Numbers Five to Nine, inclu-
sive, were neither productive
nor eventful. All were, like the
others, Hodell all over again, in
everything fundamental. One
was so far advanced that almost

THE GALAXY PRIMES

119

all of its humanity were Sec-
onds ; one so backward — or so
much younger — that its strong-
est telepaths were only Fours.
The Tellurians became acquaint-
ed with, and upon occasion
fought with, various types of
man-sized monsters in addition
to the three varieties they had
seen on Hodell.

Every planet they visited had
Arpalones and Arpales. Not by
those names, of course. Local
names for planets, guardians,
nations, cities, and persons went
into the starship’s tapes, but
that welter of names need not
be given here; this is not a
catalogue. Every planet they
visited was peopled by Homo
Sapiens; capable of inter-breed-
ing with the Tellurians and
eager to do so — especially with
the Tellurian men. Their strict
monogamy was really tested
more than once ; but it held.
Each had been visited repeatedly
by star-ships; but all Garlock
could find out about them was
that they probably came from
a world somewhere that was in-
habited by compatible human
beings of Grade Two. He could
learn nothing about the faster-
than-light drive.

Number Ten was another
queer — the Tellurians were
found incompatible.

“Let’s go down anyway.”
Belle suggested. “Overcome this
unwillingness of ours and find
out. What do you think they’ve
got down there. Glee Garlock,
that could possibly handle you
and me both?”

“I don’t think it’s a case of
‘handling’ at all. I don’t know
what it is, but I believe it’s
fatal. We won’t go dovra.”

“But it doesn’t make sense!”
Belle protested.

“Not yet, no; but it’s a datum.
Enough data and we’ll be able
to formulate a theory.”

“You and your theories! I
wish we could get some facts'.”

“You can call that a fact. But
I want you and Jim to do some
math. We know that we’re mak-
ing mighty long jumps. Assum-
ing that they’re at perfect ran-
dom, and of approximately the
same length, the probability is
greater than one-half that we’re
getting farther and farther
away from Tellus. Is there a
jump number, N, at which the
probability is one-half that we
land nearer Tellus instead of far-
ther away? My jump-at-conclu-
sions guess is that there isn’t.
That the first jump set up a
bias.”

“Ouch. That isn’t in any of
the books,” James said. “In oth-
er words, do we or do we not at-
tain a maximum? You’re mak-
ing some bum assumptions ;
among others that space isn’t
curved and that the dimensions
of the universe are very large
compared to the length of our
jumps. I’ll see if I can put it into
shape to feed to Compy. You’ve
always held that these genera-
tors work at random — the rest
of those assumptions are based
on your theory?”

“Check. I’m not getting any-

120

AMAZING STORIES

where studying my alleged Xe-
nology, so I’m going to work full
time on designing a generator
that will steer."

“You tried to before. So did
everybody else.”

“I know it, but I’ve got a lot
more data now. And I’m not
promising, just trying. Okay?
Worth a try?”

“Sure — I’m in favor of any-
thing that has any chance at all
of working.”

Jumping went on ; and Gar-
lock, instead of going abroad on
the planets, stayed in the Plei-
ades and worked.

At Number Forty-three, their
reception was of a new kind.
They were compatible with the
people of this world, but the In-
spector advised them against
landing.

“I do not forbid you,” he ex-
plained, carefully. “Our humans
are about to destroy themselves
with fission and fusion bombs.
They send missiles, without
warning, against visitors. Thus,
the last starship to visit us here
disregarded my warning and
sent down a sensing device as
usual — Engineers do not land on
non-telepathic worlds, you know
— and it was destroyed.”

“You’re a Guardian of Hu-
manity,” Garlock said. “Can’t
you straighten people out?”

“Of course not!” The Arpa-
lone was outraged. “We guard
humanity against incompatibles
and non-humans; but it is not
our business to interfere with
humanity if it wishes to destroy

itself. That is its privilege and
its own business!”

Garlock probed down. “No
telepathy, even — not even a Sev-
en. This planet is backward —
back to Year One. And nothing
but firecrackers — we’re going
down, aren’t we?”

“I’ll say we are!” Belle said.
“This will break the monotony,
at least,” and the others agreed.

“You won’t object, I take it,”
Garlock said to the Inspector,
“if we try to straighten them
out. We can postpone the blow-
up a few years, at least.”

“No objections, of course. In
fact, I can say that we Guard-
ians of Humanity would approve
such action.”

Down the Pleiades went, into
the air of the nation known as
the “Allied Republican Democ-
racies of the World,” and an
atomic-warheaded rocket came
flaming up.

“Hm ... m ... m. Ingenious
little gadget, at that,” James re-
ported, after studying it thor-
oughly. Filthy thing for fall-out,
though, if it goes off. Where’ll I
flip it. Glee? One of their
moons ?”

“Check. Third one out — no
chance of any contamination
from there.”

The missile vanished ; and had
any astronomer been looking at
that world’s third and outermost
moon at the moment, he might
have seen a tremendous flash of
light, a cloud of dust, and the
formation of a new and different
crater among the hundreds al-
ready there.

THE GALAXY PRIMES

121

“No use waiting for ’em, Jim.
All three of you toss everything
they’ve got out onto that same
moon, being sure not to hurt
anybody — yet. I’ll start asking
questions.”

The captain who had fired the
first missile appeared in the
Main. He reached for his pistol,
to find that he did not have one.
He tensed his muscles to leap at
Garlock, to find that he could
not move.

Garlock drove his probe. “Who
is your superior officer?” and be-
fore the man could formulate a
denial, that superior stood help-
less beside him.

Then three — and four. At the
fifth:

“Oh, you are the man I want.
Prime Minister — euphemism for
Dictator — Sovig. Missile launch-
ing stations and missile stor-
age? You don’t know? Who
does?”

Another man appeared, and
for twenty minutes the Pleiades
darted about the continent.

“Now submarines, atomic and
otherwise, and all surface ves-
sels capable of launching mis-
siles.” Another man appeared.

This job took a little longer,
since the crew of each vessel had
to be teleported back to their
bases. An immense scrap-pile,
probably visible with a telescope
of even moderate power, built up
rapidly on the third moon.

“Now a complete list of your
uranium-refining plants, your
military reactors, heavy-water
and heavy-hydrogen plants, and

so on.” Another man appeared,
but the starship did not move.

“Here is a list of plants,” and
Garlock named them, coldly.
“You will remember them. I will
return you to your office, and
you may — or may not, as you
please — order them evacuated.
Look at your watch. We start
destroying them in exactly sev-
enty-two of your hours from
this moment. Any and all per-
sons on the properties will be
killed; any within a radius of
ten of your miles may be killed.
Our explosives are extremely
powerful, but there is no radio-
activity and no danger from the
fall-out. The danger is from
flash-blindness, flash-burn, sheer
heat, shock-wave, concussion,
and flying debris of all kinds.”

The officer vanished and Gar-
lock turned back to the Prime
Minister.

“You have an ally, a nation
known as the ‘Brotherhood of
People’s Republics.’ Where is its
capital? Slide us over there,
Jim. Now, Prime Minister
Sovig, you and your ally, the
second and first most populous
nations of your world, are com-
bining to destroy — & pincers
movement, let us say? — the
third largest nation, or rather,
group of nations — the Nations
of the North . . . Oh, I see. Third
only in population, but first in
productive capacity and technol-
ogy. They should be destroyed
because their ideology does not
agree with yours. They are too
idealistic to strike first, so you
will. After you strike, they will

122

AAAAZING STORIES

not be able to. Whereupon you,
personally, will rule the world.
I will add to that something you
are not thinking, but should:
You will rule it until one of your
friends puts his pistol to the
back of your neck and blows
your brains out.”

They were now over the ally’s
capitol ; which launched five mis-
siles instead of one. Garlock col-
lected four more men and stud-
ied them.

“Just as bad — if possible,
worse. Who, Lingonor, is the
leader of your opposition, if
any?” Another man, very evi-
dently of the same race, appear-
ed.

“Idealistic, in a way, but
spineless and corrupt,” Garlock
announced to all. “His adminis-
tration was one of the most cor-
rupt ever known on this world.
We’ll disarm them, too.”

They did. The operation did
not take very long; as this na-
tion — or group, it was not very
clear exactly what it was — while
very high in manpower, was
very low in technology.

The starship moved to a sta-
tion high above the Capitol
Building of the Nations of the
North and moved slowly down-
ward until it hung poised one
scant mile over the building.
Missiles, jets, and heavy guns
were set and ready, but no at-
tack was made. Therefore Gar-
lock introduced himself to vari-
ous personages and invited them
aboard instead of snatching
them ; nor did he immobilize

them after they had been tele-
ported aboard.

“The president, the chief of
staff, the Chief Justice, the most
eminent scientist, the head of a
church, the leaders of the legis-
lative body and four political
bosses, the biggest business
man, biggest labor leader, and
biggest gangster. Fourteen ,
men.” As Garlock studied them
his face hardened. “I thought to
leave your Nations armed, to en-
trust this world’s future to you,
but no. Only two of you are real-
ly concerned about the welfare
of your peoples, and one of those
two is very weak. Most of you
are of no higher motivation than
are the two dictators and your
gangster Clyden. You are much
better than those we have al-
ready disarmed, but you are not
good enough.”

Garlock’s hard eyes swept over
the group for two minutes be-
fore he went on :

“I am opening all of your
minds, friend and foe alike, to
each other, so that you may all
see for yourselves what depths
of rottenness exist there and
just how unfit your world is to
associate with the decent worlds
of this or any other galaxy. It
would take God Himself to do
anything with such material,
and I am not God. Therefore,
when we have rid this world of
atomics we will leave and you
will start all over again. If you
really try, you can not only kill
all animal life on your planet,
but make it absolutely uninhab-
itable for . .

THE GALAXY PRIMES

123

“Stop it, Clee!” Lola jumped
up, her eyes flashing. Garlock
dropped the tuned group, but
Belle took it over. Everyone
there understood every thought.
“Don’t you see, you’ve done
enough? That now you’re going
too far? That these twenty-odd
men, having had their minds
opened and having been given
insight into what is possible,
will go forward instead of back-
ward?”

“Forward? With such people
as the Prime Ministers, the la-
bor and business leaders, the
bosses and the gangsters to cope
with? Do you think they’ve got
spines stiff enough for the job?”

“I’m sure of it. Our world did
it with no better. Millions and
millions of other worlds did it.
Why can’t this one do it? Of
course it can.”

“May I ask a couple of ques-
tions ?” This thought came from
the tall, trim, soldierly Chief of
Staff.

“Of course. General Cordeen.”

“We have all been taking it
for granted that you four belong
to some super-human race; some
kind or other of Homo Superior.
Do I understand correctly your
thought that your race is Homo
Sapiens, the same as ours?”

“Why, of course it is,” Lola
answered in surprise. “The
only difference is that we are a
few thousand years older than
you are.”

“You said also that there were
‘millions and millions’ of worlds
that have soved the problems
facing us. Were all these worlds

also peopled by Homo Sapiens?
It seems incredible.”

“True, nevertheless. On any
and every world of this type hu-
manity is identical physically;
and the mental differences are
due only to their being in differ-
ent stages of development. In
fact, every planet we have visit-
ed except this one makes a regu-
lar custom of breeding its best
blood with the best blood of oth-
er solar systems. And as to the
‘millions and millions,’ I meant
only a very large but indefinite
number. As far as I know, not
even a rough estimate has ever
been made — has there, Clee?”

“No, iTut it will probably turn
out to be millions of millions,
instead of millions and millions ;
and squared and then cubed at
that. My guess is that it’ll take
another ten thousand years of
preliminary surveying such as
we’re doing, by all the crews the
various Galaxian Societies can
put out, before even the rough-
est kind of an estimate can be
made as to how many planets
are inhabited by mutually fer-
tile human peoples.”

For a moment the group was
stunned. Then;

“Do you mean to say,” asked
the merchant prince, “that you
Galaxians are not the only ones
who have interstellar travel?”

“Far from it. In fact, yours
is the only world we have seen
that does not have it, in one
form or another.”

“Oh? More than one way?
That makes it still worse.

124

AMAZING STORIES

Would you be willing to sell us
plans, or lease us ships . . . ?”

"So that you could exploit oth-
er planets? We will not. You
would get nowhere, even if you
had an interstellar drive right
now. You, personally, are a per-
fect example of what is wrong
with this planet. Rapacious, in-
satiable; you violate every con-
cept of ethics, common decency,
and social responsibility. Your
world’s technology is so far
ahead of its sociology that you
not only should be, but actually
are being, held in quarantine.”

"What?”

“Exactly. One race I know of
has been inspecting you regular-
ly for several hundreds of your
years. They will not make con-
tact with you, or allow you to
leave your own world, until you
grow up to something beyond
the irresponsible-baby stage.
Thus, about two and one-half of
your years ago, a starship of
that race sent down a sensing
element — unmanned, of course —
to check your state of develop-
ment. Brother Sovig volatilized
it with an atomic missile.”

"We did not do it,” the dicta-
tor declared. “It was the war-
mongering capitalists.”

"You brainless, mindless, con-
temptible idiot,” Garlock sneer-
ed. “Are even you actually stu-
pid enough to try to lie with
your mind? To minds linked to
your own and to mine?”

"We did do it, then, but it was
only a flying saucer.”

“Just as this ship was, to you,
only a flying saucer, I suppose.

THE GALAXY PRIMES

So here’s something else for you
to think about. Brother Sovig,
with whatever power your al-
leged brain is able to generate.
When you shot down that senser,
the starship did not retaliate,
but went on without taking any
notice of you. When you tried
to shoot us down, we took some
slight action, but did not kill
anyone and are now discussing
the situation. Listen carefully
now, and remember — it is very
possible that the next craft you
attack in such utterly idiotic
fashion will, without any more
warning than you gave, blow
this whole planet into a ball of
incandescent gas.”

“Can that actually be done?”
the scientist asked. For the first
time, he became really interest-
ed in the proceedings.

“Very easily. Doctor Ches-
wick,” Garlock replied. “We
could do it ourselves with scarce-
ly any effort and at very small
cost. You are familiar, I sup-
pose, with the phenomenon of
ball lightning?”

“Somewhat. Its mechanism
has never been elucidated in any
very satisfactory mathematics.”

“Well, we have at our disposal
a field some . . .”

“Hold it, Glee,” James warn-
ed. “Do you want to put out that
kind of stuff around here?”

“Um ... m ... m. What do
you think?”

James studied Cheswick’s
mind. “Better than I thought,”
he decided. “He has made two
really worth-while intuitions — a

125

genius type. He’s been working
on what amounts almost to the
Coupler Theory for ten years.
He’s almost got it, but you know
intuitions of that caliber can’t
be scheduled. He might get it
tomorrow — or never. I’d say
push him over the hump.”

“Okay with me. We’ll take a
vote — one blackball kills it.
Brownie? Just the link, of
course. A few hints, perhaps, at
application, but no technological
data.”

“I say give it to him. He’s
earned it. Besides, he isn’t
young and may die before he
gets it, and that would lose them
two or three hundred years.”

“Belle?”

“In favor. Shall I drop the
linkage? No,” she answ’ered her
own question. “No other minds
here will have any idea of what
it means, and it may do some of
them a bit of good to see one of
their own minds firing on more
than one barrel.”

“Thank you, Galaxians.” The
scientist’s mind had been quiv-
ering with eagerness. “I am in-
expressibly glad that you have
found me worthy of so much
help.”

Garlock entered Cheswick’s
mind. First he impressed, indeli-
bly, six symbols and their mean-
ings. Second, a long and intri-
cate equation; which the scien-
tist studied avidly.

During the ensuing pause,
Garlock cut the President and
Chief of Staff out of the linkage.
“We have just given Cheswick

a basic formula. In a couple of
hundred years it will give you
full telepathy, and then you will
begin really to go up. There’s
nothing secret about it — in fact,
I'd advise full publication — but
even so it might be a smart idea
to give him both protection and
good working conditions. Brains
like his are apt to be centuries
apart on any world.”

“But this is ... it could be . . .
it must be!” Cheswick exclaim-
ed. “I never would have formu-
lated that ! It isn’t quite implicit,
of course, but from this there
derives the existence of, and the
necessity for, electrogravitics !
An entirely new field of reality
and experiment in science!”

“There does indeed,” Garlock
admitted, “and it is far indeed
from being implicit. You leaped
a tremendous gap. And yes, the
resultant is more humanistic
than technological.”

Belle’s ear-splitting whistle
resounded throughout the Main.
“How do you like them tid-bits,
Clee?” she asked. “Two hundred
years in seventy-eight seconds?
You folks will have telepathy by
the time your present crop of
babies grows up. Clee, aren’t you
sorry you got mad and blew
your top and wanted to pick up
your marbles and go home ?
Three such intuitions in one
man’s lifetime beats par, even
for the genius course.”

“It sure does,” Garlock admit-
ted, ruefully. “I should have
studied these minds — particular-
ly his — before jumping at con-
clusions.”

126

AMAZING STORIES

“May I say a few words?” the
president asked.

“You may indeed, sir. I was
hoping you would.”

“We have been discouraged;
faced with an insoluble problem.
Sovig and Lingonor, knowing
that their own lives were forfeit
anyway, were perfectly willing
to destroy all the life on this
world to make us yield. Now,
however, with the insight and
the encouragement you Galax-
ians have given us, the situation
has changed. Reduced to ordi-
nary high explosives, they can-
not conquer us . .

“Especially without an air-
force/’ Lola put in. “I, personal-
ly, will see to it that every
bomber and fighter plane they
now have goes to the third moon.
It will be your responsibility to
see to it that they do not re-
build.”

“Thank you. Miss Montan don.
We will see to it. As for our
internal difficulties — I think, un-
der certain conditions, they can
be handled. Our lawless ele-
ment,” he glanced at the gang-
ster, “can be made impotent. The
corrupt practices of both capital
and labor can be stopped. We
have laws,” here he looked at the
members of Congress and the
judge, “which can be enforced.
The conditions I mentioned
would be difficult at the mo-
ment, since so few of us are
here and it is manifest that few
if any of our people will believe
that such people as you Galax-
ians really exist. Would it be
possible for you. Miss Montan-

don, to spend a few days — or
whatever time you can spare —
in showing our Congress, and as
many other grou-ps as possible,
what humanity may hope to be-
come?”

“Of course, sir. I was plan-
ning on it.”

“I’m afraid that is impossi-
ble,” the Chief of Staff said.

“Why, General Cardeen?”
Lola asked.

“Because you’d be shot,” Car-
deen said, bluntly. “We have a
very good Secret Service, it is
true, and we would give you
every protection possible ; but
such an all-out effort as would
be made to assassinate you
would almost certainly succeed.”

“Shot?” Garlock asked in sur-
prise. “What with? You haven’t
anything that could even begin
to crack an Operator’s Shield.”

“With this, sir.” Cardeen held
out his automatic pistol for in-
spection.

“Oh, I hadn’t studied it ... a
pellet-projector . . .”

“Pellet! Do you call a four-
seventy-five slug a pellet?”

“Not much of that, really . . .
it shoots eight times — shoot all
eight of them at her. None of
them will touch her.”

“What? I ivill not! One of
those slugs will go through three
women like her, front to back in
line.”

“I will, then.” The pistol leap-
ed into Garlock’s hand. “Hold up
one hand. Brownie, and catch
’em. Don’t let 'em splash — no de-
formation, so he can recognize
his own pellets.”

THE GALAXY PRIMES

127

Holding the unfamiliar weap-
on in a clumsy, highly unortho-
dox grip — something like a
schoolgirl’s first attempt — Gar-
lock glanced once at Lola’s up-
raised palm and eight shots
roared out as fast as the gases
of explosion could operate the
mechanism. The pistol’s barrel
remained rigidly motionless un-
der all the stress of ultra-rapid
fire. Lola’s slim, deeply-tanned
arm did not even quiver under
the impact of that storm of
heavy bullets against her appar-
ently unsupported hand. No one
saw those bullets strike that
gently-curved right palm, but
everyone saw them drop into her
cupped left hand, like drops of
water dripping rapidly from the
end of an icicle into a bowd.

“Here are your pellets. Gen-
eral Cardeen.” Lola handed them
to him with a smile.

“Holy — Jumping — Snakes !”
the general said, and;

“Wotta torpedo!” came the
gangster’s envious thought.

“You see, I am perfectly safe

from being ‘shot,’ as you call it,”
Lola said. “So I’ll come down
and work with you. You might
have your news services put out
a bulletin, though. I never have
killed anyone, and am not going
to here, but anyone who tries to
shoot me or bomb me or any-
thing will lose both hands at the
wrists just before he fires. That
would keep them from killing
anyone standing near me, don’t
you think?”

“I should think it would,”
General Cordeen thought, and a
pall of awe covered the linked
minds. The implications of the
naively frank remark just utter-
ed by this apparently inoffensive
and defenseless young woman
were simply too overwhelming
to be discussed.

“Anything else on the agenda.
Glee?” Lola asked.

There was not, and the star-
ship’s guests were returned,
each to his own home place.

And not one of them, it may
be said, was exactly the same as
he had been.

(To be continued)

The Big Science-Fiction Event for 1959 is

THE 17th ANNUAL

WORLD SCIENCE-FICTION CONVENTION

Labor Day Week-end September 4th to September 7th
Pick-Fort Shelby Hotel • Detroit, Michigan

For details write:

DETENTION, 2218 Drexel Street, Detroit 15, Michigan

128

JUBILATION, U.S.A.

By G. L. VANDENBURG

ITob'v* heard, I'm sure, about the two Martians who went into
a bar, saw a Jakebox Hashing and glittering, and said to it,
"What's a nice girl like you doing in a loint like this?"
Well, here's one about two Capellans and a slot-machine . . . .

T ORYL pointed the small cr)^)-
terpreter toward the wooden,
horseshoe - shaped sign. The
sign’s legend was carved in
bright yellow letters. Sartan,
Toryl’s companion, watched up
and down the open highway for
signs of life. In seconds the
small cylindrical mechanism com-
pleted the translation.

The sign said:

JUBILATION, U.S.A.!!

The doggondest, cheeriest
little town in America!

The two aliens smiled at each
other. Unaccustomed to oral
conversation, they exchanged
thoughts.

"Tke crypterpreter worked in-
credibly fast. The language is
quite simple. It would seem safe
to proceed. The sign indicates

friendliness,” thought Toryl, the
older of the tv/o Capellans.

“Very well, Brother,” replied
Sartan, “though I still worry for
the safety of the ship.”

“Sartan, our instruments tell
us that anyone who discovers the
ship,” Toryl explained, a trifle
impatient, “will show a remark-
able degree of curiosity before
they display any hostility.”

Sartan agreed to dismiss his
worries and the two aliens be-
gan to walk along the barren
highway. Before them, at a
great distance, they could see a
cluster of small frame buildings.
When they had walked a hundred
feet or more they encountered
another sign.

JUBILATION. U.S.A.!!

WELCOME. STRANGER! See Amer-
ica first and begin with

JUBILATION!

129

And several hundred feet fur-
ther two more signs.

THE ROTARY CLUB of Jubilation
welcomes and extends the warm
hand of friendship to you ! ! ! !
You are now entering Paradise,
brother !

HOWDY. STRANGER! COME RIGHT
ON IN. STAY AWHILE AND MAKE
YOURSELF TO HOME!

— Jubilation Chamber of
Commerce —

As members of a peaceful race,
Toryl and Sartan naturally found
the signs encouraging. They
walked at a sprightly pace.

A whirring noise behind them
brought the two to a halt. They
turned to discover a pre-war
Chevy choking its way along the
road. The aliens edged their
way to a gulley along the side of
the road. They were confident of
a friendly reception but, in the
event their calculations had been
wrong, they poised themselves to
make a break in the direction of
their ship.

The ancient Chevy sputtered
by. The driver was almost as an-
cient as the car, a bearded fel-
low with a stogy stuck between
his teeth and a crushed hat on
his head.

The driver slowed down when
he saw the aliens. “Howdy,
strangers!" he yelled cheerily.
“Say, ain’t you fellers a mite
warm in them coveralls?” He
cackled merrily, put his foot to
the floor and sped on by.

130

Sartan looked at his compan-
ion. “/ am sorry, I should not
have doubted you, Brother. You
were right. These people will
welcome our visit. They seem
very cordial.”

“Good, Sartan. Let us con-
tinue.”

One hundred yards further
they were confronted by still an-
other brace of signs. They stop-
ped once more.

CITY LIMITS
(Gambling allowed)

JUBILATION! Where troubles

never come due, ’cause the
Good Lord takes a likin’ to you !

Where gloom and doom are out-
lawed and there’s never any
sadness.

Where a smile lights up the
midnight sky and gives off only
gladness !

(Gambling allowed)

The second sign was another
in the shape of a horseshoe.

Beyond This Point Yon Hove 4372
Friends You Never Had Before!!!

(Gambling allowed)

Suddenly Toryl stopped and
played with several switches and
dials on the crypterpreter.

“What is wrong. Brother?"
asked the puzzled Sartan.

“I receive no direct transla-
tion for the term ‘gambling’.”

AMAZING STORIES

“What is the closest term the
machine gives?’’

“Fraternizing’’

Sartan laughed. “Now it is you
tvho fret, Toryl. According to
the signpost legends ‘fraterniz-
ing’ would seem to be accurate.’’

A steady rolling sound of pas-
sionless one - armed bandits
drov/ned out all other noise in
Okie’s Oasis Bar. As a result,
Toryl and Sartan drew little at-
tention when they entered. Ex-
cept for their blue-metallic space
suits they looked like and were
ordinary humans.

They proceeded rather timidly
toward the bar. Okie, the pro-
prietor, was on duty readying
the place for the night shift.
Toryl held up his hand. The cryp-
terpreter had already informed
him that oral conversation was
the manner of communication on
the strange planet. Such conver-
sation had long ago been aban-
doned on the planet Capella, but
learned men such as Toryl and
Sartan were familiar with how
it was done, though when they
spoke they sometimes had to
halt between syllables.

“How-dy!” Toryl flashed a
wide grin at the barkeep.

“Just hold your horses there,
mister!” was Okie’s sharp reply.
“You ain’t the only snake in this
desert. There’s four customers
ahead of you!”

Sartan transmitted an admon-
ishing thought to his compan-
ion. “Toryl, you should have no-
ticed that the man was busy. He
has only two hands.’’

“Forgive me. Brother, I was
blinded by my own excitement.’’

The two Capellans waited and
were soon attracted by the sil-
ver-handled machines that seem-
ed to have most of the customers
fascinated.

Sartan wandered over to
where a small crowd of men was
gathered around a single ma-
chine. A huge man, raw-boned
and crimson-faced, wearing sur-
plus army suntans, was operat-
ing the machine.

The big man dropped a large
coin into a slot. He gave the sil-
ver handle a vicious snap. It
made a discordant, bone-crushing
sound. Three little wheels, visi-
ble under glass, spun dizzily.
Anxious, screwed-up faces look-
ed on as the first little wheel
stopped. Bell Fruit.

A collective gasp came from
the small crowd. The second lit-
tle wheel stopped. Bell Fruit.

Another gasp.

Sartan touched the arm of the
man operating the gambling de-
vice. “I beg your pardon, but
could you please tell me — ”

The big man wheeled around
like a bear aroused from hiber-
nation. “Hands off, mister! You
trying to jinx me?”

The third little wheel stopped.
Lemon.

The crowd groaned. The big
man turned on Sartan again, a
wild and furious look in his eye.
“You jinxed me! Damn you, I
oughta’ bust you one right in the
snout! !”

“My humble apol-o-gies, sir,”
the bewildered Sartan began.

JUBILATION. U. S. A.

131

"I’ll give you your humble
apologies right back ■with my
fist,” roared the gambler.

Toryl quickly made his way
through the small crowd v/hich
by now was itching to witness a
fight. “Ex-cuse me, sir, but my
friend did not real-ize — ”

“The hell he didn’t!” The
gambler fumed. “He was trying
to jinx me, by God! And I’m
gonna teach him to keep his
paws — ”

“Okay, okay, you guys, break
it up!!” It was Okie, massive
and mean looking, using his bar-
rel belly to push his way through
to the two aliens and the unlucky
gambler. “What’s goin’ on here,
Smokey?” he inquired of the
gambler.

“Okie, I had a jackpot work-
in’ when this dumb jerk here ups
and grabs my arm — ”

Toryl interrupted with, “My
friend is sorry for what he did,
.sir.”

Okie stabbed a cigar into his
mouth. “Who are you guys any-
how? Where’d you dig up them
crazy coveralls?”

“Sure a queer way to dress in
this heat,” spoke a voice from
the crowd.

This was the moment of pride
that Toryl and Sartan had look-
ed forward to. They both
grinned confident grins. “We
have come to you from Capella,”
he said with some exultation.

Okie’s face went blank. “Ca-
pella! Where the hell is that?”

“Sounds like one of them
damn hick towns in California,”
said Smokey, the gambler.

Toryl, somewhat deflated, but
by no means defeated, hastened
to elucidate. “Capella is lo-cat-ed
in the con-stell-a-tion which you
call Auriga.”

“Anybody know what the hell
he’s talking about?” asked the
annoyed saloonkeeper.

Toryl and Sartan exchanged
troubled glances. Sartan took up
the cudgel. “Auriga is a constel-
lation, a star cluster, sir. It is
forty-two million light years
away.”

“What in tarnation is a light
year?” asked an old-timer in the
group.

Another replied, “They must
be from Alaska. They got light
years up there, sometimes stays
light the whole confounded year
’round.”

“That must be it,” agreed
Okie, “and that’s why they’re
wearin’ them crazy suits.” The
saloonkeeper unloosed a grim
laugh. “You can take them arc-
tic pajamas off now, boys.
Weather’s kinda warm in these
parts!”

“Hey, fellas!” a voice shot
out, “didya bring any Eskimo
babes down with you?”

The crowd roared approval at
the witticism.

Toryl transmitted a depressing
thought to his companion. “I
fear they do not believe us, Sar-
tan”

Sartan did not get the oppor-
tunity to answer immediately.

“Listen, you guys,” Okie
pounded his fat finger into Sar-
tan’s chest. “I want you to be-

132

AMAZING STORIES

have yourselves, understand ?
Now that means lay off the cus-
tomers while they’re at the
games. You wanna gamble there
is plenty of machines available.
I got a respectable place, I
wanna keep it that way!” He
turned and addressed the other
men. “All right, boys, fun’s over!
No fight today! Drink up and
gamble your money away. Let’s
get back to the games.”

It was necessary for Toryl to
use the crypterpreter to trans-
late the various signs along the
bar. Okie saw the small cylindri-
cal machine sitting on the bar.
His curiosity bested him. He
gave it a more thorough exam-
ination than a dog gives a fire-
plug.

Some of the signs read:

"DOUBLE BOURBON— $2.10" “COOL
GIN RICKEY— $1.25" "IN GOD WE
TRUST, BUT NOBODY ELSE!" "RUM
COLLINS— $1" "A FRIEND IN NEED
IS A FRIEND INDEED" "NO INDIANS
SERVED HERE" and "SCOTCH-
IMPORTED, $1.50 — DOMESTIC,
$1.30."

“Cool gin rick-ey,” said Toryl.

“Cornin’ right up,” Okie mum-
bled, his attention still wrapped
around the crypterpreter. “Say,
what is this gadget anyway?”

“It is a cryp-terp-reter,” Toryl
beamed with pride. “It en-ables
us to un-der-stand and speak
your lan-guage.”

“Aw, go on!” Okie managed a
fainthearted grin, uncertain of
whether his leg was being pull-
ed. “Come on now, tell me what
it is.”

“But I have just told you,
sir.”

The barkeep cursed under his
breath. “Two gin rickeys, did you
say?”

“Yes.”

Okie brought the drinks.

Sartan smiled broadly. “Thank
you ex-ceed-ing-ly.”

“That’ll be two-fifty.”

Toryl raised his glass as
though making a toast. “Two-
fif-ty!” he repeated.

Okie caught his arm and
brought the glass down.

"Two-fifty!” the barkeep said
with grim insistence.

Sartan pursed his lips compre-
hendingly. He removed a large
pentagonal piece of metal from
his pocket and gave it to Okie.

Okie took the piece between
his fingers, examined it and
frowned. “I give up. What is
it?”

Sartan had to glance at Toryl
for an answer. Toryl threw a
switch on the crypterpreter.

“Money,” Toryl silently advis-
ed him.

“Money,” said Sartan to Okie.

“You guys hold on and don’t
drink up yet,” growled the bar-
keep. He then yelled in the di-
rection of the blackjack table.
“Hey, Nugget! Get on over here,
I need you!!”

A wiry little man with a full,
unkempt beard, hustled over to
the bar. “Nugget McDermott at
yer service, Okie ! What’s yer
pleasure ?” he asked with a
sunny smile.

“Take a look at this.” Okie
handed him the piece of metal.

JUBILATION. U. S. A.

133

The old prospector turned it
over in his hands, bit it and then
held it in his palm as though to
judge its weight. His expert
opinion was, “It’s gold, Okie,”
and was uttered without a shred
of modesty.

“Are you sure?”

The old-timer was highly in-
sulted. “Am I sure!! Why you
lop-eared, sun-stroked jackass,
of course I’m sure!!! Nugget
McDermott is drawed to gold
like nails to a magnet! Why
when this here town was nothin’
but a patch of cactus — ”

“All right, all right,” Okie
waved him off, “don’t get your
gander up! Go on back to the
blackjack table and tell Sam to
give you a drink on the house.”

“Much obliged, Okie, much
obliged,” said Nugget, doffing
his hat and trotting back to the
blackjack table.

The barkeep’s face was pure
sunshine when he turned to the
aliens again. “Gentlemen, with
this kind of a substitute you
don’t need money in my place.
Drink up!”

“Thank you ex-ceed-ing-ly,”
said Sartan.

Okie arbitrarily judged the
gold piece to be worth ten dol-
lars. “The management invites
yx)u to try your luck, gentlemen.
Go on give it a whirl.”

Toryl and Sartan wore blank
expressions as Okie slapped sev-
en dollars and fifty cents change
on the bar — four silver dollars,
four half-dollars and six quar-
ters.

“Don’t be bashful, gentlemen.

Okie’s machines are friendly to
one and all,” said the barkeep.

Toryl removed the change and
gave his companion two silver
dollars, two half-dollars and
three quarters.

“What is the purpose of the
machines?” thought Sartan as
they approached the one-armed
bandits.

“I suppose that is what the
one called Okie wishes us to
learn”

“Perhaps it is some type of
registration machine.”

“It is doubtful. The gentleman
you disturbed has been at the
same machine since we arrived.”

Sartan gripped the handle of
a vacant machine. “Do you think
it might be a kind of intelli-
gence test?”

In lieu of an answer Toryl fo-
cused his attention on a small
card, above the m^hine, which
gave the winning combinations.

“There is that term again.”

“What term?”

“Gambling.” Toryl pointed to
a line on the card warning mi-
nors not to gamble. A look of
perplexity fell upon his face. “I
am no longer sure the term has
anything to do with fraterniz-
ing” he observed mentally.

“Let us find out.”

Sartan placed a quarter in the
coin slot. The three little wheels
went spinning. Cherry. Lemon.
Lemon.

Nothing.

Toryl and Sartan looked at
each other, their faces blanker
than ever.

134

AMAZING STORIES

"Try it again."

Sartan disposed of another
quarter. They waited. Lemon.
Plum. Plum.

Nothing.

Toryl inspected the machine
from every angle, like a man on
the outside trying to figure a
way in. “Let me try it."

He put a quarter in the slot.

Three lemons.

"It isn’t very interesting, is
it?” thought Sartan.

"Why don’t we try the larger
pieces ?”

“A splendid idea, Brother."

The larger coins did not fit.
Toryl proceeded to report this
sad state of affairs to Okie and
was amazed when, for the eight
large coins, Okie rewarded him
with twenty-four smaller ones.
He went back to his companion
at the one-armed bandit.

They then dropped twenty con-
secutive quarters into the ap-
propriately named machine with-
out getting so much as a single
quarter in return.

"It is puzzling, is it not.
Brother?”

"Yes, Sartan. From all indica-
tions it would seem to be a ma-
chine totally without purpose."

"It does consume money.”

“But why would one build a
machine whose sole purpose is to
consume money?"

Sartan gave it some hard
thought. "I don’t know!"

"Remarkable!” Toryl conclud-
ed. “But nothing is done unth-
out a purpose."

"Obviously we’ve found some-
thing that is.”

"No, I do not believe that. Let
me have the electro-analyzer."

The aliens were so engrossed
in their problem as to be un-
aware that Okie and two men at
the bar were casting suspicious
eyes on them.

Sartan fished around in his
pocket and produced a small ob-
ject in the shape of an irregular
triangle. Toryl took the electro-
analyzer from him, removed the
cover and moved his finger
around inside. He replaced the
cover and slapped the electro-
analyzer against the side of the
one-armed bandit. When he took
his hand away the small object
stuck to the machine like a leech.

Okie scratched his head and
addressed one of the two men at
the bar. “What the hell you sup-
pose they’re doin’, Sam? What’s
that gadget for?”

“Search me,” replied Sam, a
well dressed, stoop-shouldered
gent, “but if you want my opin-
ion it doesn’t look legal.”

“Hey, Nugget!” yelled the
barkeep.

Again the little old prospector
hustled himself over to the bar.

“Nugget McDermott at your
service! What’ll it be, Okie?”

“Go on over and get the sher-
iff. Tell him there’s two queer
characters here trying to jimmy
one of my machines in broad
daylight.”

The old man’s feet kicked up
sawdust as he scampered out the
door. Okie kept his attention
riveted to the two aliens.

Toryl was busy adjusting the

135

JUBILATION. U. S. A.

electro-analyzer to the best pos-
sible position.

“What if it does not respond
to this machine?" Sartan wanted
to know.

“I do not think the machine
contains any type of metal with
which we are unfamiliar. We
will have a reading in one min-
ute."

The aliens took a step back-
ward and waited.

A sudden noise, like that of a
television tube exploding, jolted
everyone in the room, including
Toryl and Sartan. The blackjack
table emptied. Gamblers left
their machines. A semi-circle of
the curious formed around the
two aliens. Okie lit out from be-
hind the bar and elbowed his
way through the crowd.

The aliens’ concentration was
unbroken by the attention they
had aroused. With all the single
mindedness of religious fanatics
they continued to observe the
strange mechanical device.

Okie was dumbfounded to find
the machine still in one piece
and doubly dumbfounded to dis-
cover it was behaving in a most
unconventional manner. It was
emitting a low steady gurgling
sound and an occasional sputter
or burp. The legs of the machine
seemed unsteady. Its body shift-
ed back and forth in herky-jerky
motions like an old-fashioned
washing machine. The three
little Bell Fruit wheels were
spinning at the speed of an air-
plane propeller. Okie thought
they might never stop again.

“What the hell are you crazy

136

galoots doing to my machine!”
he bellowed.

Before the aliens could answer
there was another explosive
sound, causing the crowd to
jump back several steps. Quar-
ters fell from the mouth of the
machine, slowly at first, then at
an alarming rate. The coins fell,
bounced and rolled all over the
floor. The crowd gulped with
fascination.

“Holy catfish!” said one of the
men, “how long since that blast-
ed thing’s paid off?”

“Looks like this is the first
time,” said one of the others.

“You guys keep quiet!” yelled
Okie.

The coins continued to fall for
what seemed like a record time.
The crowd was spellbound. Okie
watched in silent fury.

And the aliens were more con-
fused than they had been when
the machine wasn’t paying off.

The one-armed bandit finally
coughed out its last quarter. The
three Bell Fruit wheels came to
an abrupt halt, as though an in-
ner spring had snapped. The
machine broke down. Certain ob-
servers later reported that the
poor thing actually looked ex-
hausted.

The sheriff burst in the door
with Nugget McDermott close
behind.

“Sheriff, I want you to arrest
these two tinhorns!” cried Okie.

“Tinhorns ? ?” Sartan’s face
was creased with bewilderment.

“What’s wrong, Okie?” asked
the sheriff.

A/AAZING STORIES

“Take a look for yourself!
These two bugged my machine
and then broke it down ! Look at
that money all over the floor!”

Toryl smiled. “We meant no
harm, sir — ”

“The hell you didn’t mean no
harm! You were out to rob
me!”

“We were only ex-per-i-ment-
ing — ”

“There’s their crooked experi-
menting right there!” said Okie,
pointing a finger at the deacti-
vated one-armed bandit. “I want
them locked up until that ma-
chine’s paid for!”

“All right,” said the sheriff,
“you two better come with me.”

“But, sir,” Sartan protested,
“we merely wanted to know how
the machine functioned. You see,
we are from Capella and — ”

“Capella!” exclaimed the sher-
iff. “Where is that? I never
heard of the place.”

“Well, it is not a part of your
Earth.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you say
so before!” The sheriff winked
at the crowd. “You mean you
boys are from out of this
world ?”

“That is correct,” Sartan
grinned proudly.

“Well, well! That makes a big
difference!” The sheriff turned
to the crowd. “All right, boys,
grab them and hustle them over
to the jail house!”

A group of men slowly closed
in on the two aliens.

Toryl and Sartan backed away
toward the wall.

JUBILATION. U. S. A.

"7 believe they are angry,
Brother,” thought Sartan.

“But why?” inquired Toryl.

“I do not know. Do you sup-
pose the machine represented
some form of religious diety?”

“Exceed-ing-ly possible,” Toryl
answered.

As the men came closer Okie
yelled, “Just get them two
crackpots ! I’ll plug the first man
that touches that money!"

The men were diverted by
Okie’s warning. They didn’t no-
tice, until it was almost too late,
that the two strangers were half-
way out the door.

“Get after them! !” the sheriff
bellowed.

The aliens ran as though their
lives were at stake, which was
true, following the same route
they had taken into town.

The crowd followed them as
far as the edge of town. Frcm
there they hurled rocks.

Toryl and Sartan continued to
run at breakneck speed, praying
they would reach the safety of
the ship. Once they looked be-
hind them and saw that the
crowd of angry men had given
up the chase.

Halfway back to their ship
they passed a sign, though they
didn’t bother to stop and read it.

YOU ARE NOW LEAVING
JUBILATION, U.S.A.!!

The doggondest, cheeriest little
town in America! Come back
soon 1 !

THE ENr
137

so you say

Dear Editor:

I disagree completely with Dr. Barron’s article “Earthman Keep
Out!” in the December issue of Amazing. I hereby give you my con-
cept of the “sufficient reason” mentioned in the editorial of that
same issue: I believe the mysterious commodity termed “human
nature” dictates that man explore Outer Space. It dictates that the
challenge of the unknown be taken up. The major part of human
nature, to my mind, is curiosity. Curiosity is one of the items that
raises man above the level of animals. When man loses his curiosity,
he will cease to be homo sapiens as we know him.

In effect, man has to explore Space because it’s there. Human na-
ture will drive man through the Solar System and, if possible, be-
yond. This is man’s duty. This is man’s destiny.

Grant Treller
4518 Levelside Ave.

Lakewood, Calif.

Dear Editor:

Most outstanding features in the December issue, I think, are the
remarkable editorial and the article by Dr. Arthur Barron. The
questions voiced in these features seem like rockets of common sense
piercing the glamor-veil which the lay-mind eternally weaves for
itself with big-sounding words and phrases. “Outer Space,” “Space-
time continuum,” Space-warp,” “Interplanetary, inter solar, inter-
galactial” etc.

Very few persons, I venture to guess, have given thought to the
probable or improbable purpose or to the multiple results of attain-
ing to the moon, much less to any planet in this solar system alone.

It might give a spaceman quite a shock to pierce the electro-vital
“aura” of this planet of ours, to find no moon to be seen anjrwhere ! !

And while to the lay-mind the word “space” means merely “dis-
tance”it is not so with esoteric philosophers. Interplanetary travel
is probably much more quickly done by way of “consciousness-travel”
than by distance-travel as we elementary earthlings understand

138

same. But will any modern (?) scientist believe that the points of
light we call “planets” in the so-called sky are but focal points of
the general principles of which the planets are living embodiments,
and that a simple (ha!) consciousness-warp would outspeed any
material spaceship that might succeed in surviving the “dissolu-
tion-stratum” in the puerile effort to transmit earth-type matter to
some other planet’s material body?

And, as you so aptly say, what price planetary visits? We do not
seem able to cause a brotherly, progressive civilization based on hu-
man values, even on this wealthy and resourceful Earth of ours.

Miles MacAlpin
7401/2 S.W. 51 st
Portland, Ore.

• Now let me get this straight. Treller says man must explore
space because it’s there. MacAlpin says — I think — we must explore
space because it isn’t there. One thing I know for sure : the question
raised in that editorial has kicked up lots of comment.

Dear Editor:

I used to be a regular science fiction fan but it seemed that a few
years ago nearly all the s-f magazines went almost entirely fantas-
tic. I don’t care for most fantasy. I heartily commend you for sep-
arating your type of stories.

In the December issue of Amazing I rate “The Big Count-Down”
as being way out in front and among the best of s-f. C. Eric Maine
is a very imaginative writer and possesses a style that puts .his
ideas across very vividly. “Deadly Satellite” and “Unto the Nth
Generation” were the next two stories I enjoyed most. I also thought
that the article “Earthman Keep Out!” was excellent and thought
provoking.

Chester F. Milbourn
Estancia, N. Mexico

Dear Editor:

“The Big Count-Down” by Charles Eric Maine is my reason for
writing this letter. As a reader of science fiction I was struck by
the falseness of characters in the story; as a graduate student in
physics (at the University of California) my main complaint is Mr.
Maine’s appalling lack of knowledge in the field of basic physics.
Perhaps I am a bit too critical because of my work in this field but
the final page of the story was just too much to bear.

Let’s get a few facts straight: 1 ) The property of inertia is asso-
ciated with the mass of a body. 2 ) The mass of a body is completely
independent of its weight, weight being a phenomenon caused by

. . . OR SO YOU SAY

139

the gravitational attraction between two masses; in this case the
attraction . between the mass of the Earth and the mass of the
rocket. 3) The force necessary to accelerate a body is proportional
to its mass not its weight. 4) As the velocity of a body approaches
the velocity of light its mass approaches infinity and therefore the
force necessary to accelerate it to a higher velocity becomes infinite.

With these facts in mind we can easily see the absurdity of the
theory presented in Mr. Maine’s story. I suggest that Mr. Maine
might profit from a course in high school physics.

Robert M. Arzt
18 Hillside Court
Berkeley, Calif.

• The Maine novel brought lots of mail, too. Most of it compli-
mentary, as in the first letter above; some of it cntical. Aside to
Mr. Arzt: “false characters” is a complaint I’ll accept; mass-weight
1 admit, but don’t accept. Remember, the title of our magazine in-
cludes the word “fiction.”

Dear Editor:

“The Blonde From Space” started out wonderfully. “The Seven
Eyes of Captain Dark” was rather poor, late in starting, but it
ended in a bang; one of the most entertaining stories, I think I’ve
ever read in Amazing.

James W. Ayers
609 First Street
Attalla, Ala.

Dear Editor:

My ratings on the December issue: Maine can do better. His
“Waters Under the Earth” was his best novel. Slesar should hide
in a corner after all his other memorable tales; the same is true of
the Budrys’ story.

Let’s have a novel from Bob Silverberg . . . also I’d like to see
some more out of A. Bertram Chandler.

Get rid of Cotts as a reviewer ; review them yourself if you must,
but get something worthwhile in that space.

Paul Shingleton, Jr.

320 26th Street
Dunbar, W. Va.

• O.K., Silverberg novel coming up soon. And lots more by Chan-
dler. So you don’t like Cotts? Just read the second paragraph in the
next letter . . .

140

(Continued on page 142)
AAAAZING STORIES

by S. E. COTTS

STAR SCIENCE FICTION STORIES #4. Edited by Fredcrik Pohl. 157 pp.
BaUantine Books. Paper: 35^.

The excellence of Frederik Pohl’s anthologies has become a sci-
ence fiction tradition. The present volume can only add to it. Each
year there are many S-F collections published, but Pohl’s is one of
the few whose stories are all originals. One can read through from
cover to cover with no chance of running into a story already met
in a magazine or some other source.

Among the authors represented are Henry Kuttner and Cyril
Kornbluth, both of whom died recently. Mr. Pohl could not have
picked two more fitting stories to pay tribute to them. Not only are
both of top quality, but in their brief span of pages they give ua
the essence of what was unique in each one’s writing. Kuttner’s is
of a mystical cast, full of omens ; Kornbluth’s is a brief, but fright-
ening satire.

If there is any criticism of the book, it lies in the brevity of the
two novelettes. Take the one by James Gunn, for instance. In forty-
nine pages he attempts far too much. Granted he does an excellent
job, but it only serves to frustrate the serious reader since he tries
to encompass such enormities as immortality, the future of the
medical profession, a dynasty of superhuman people, a picture of
social turmoil, and a love story. An ordinary length novel would be
too brief for an adequate coverage of all this.

This shortcoming not withstanding, Mr. Pohl has bi'ought out an-
other fine volume which will provide a memorable reading expe-
rience.

THE SPACE WILLIES. By Eric Frank Russell. 131 pp. Ace Book.
Paper: 35<j;.

Here is another rough and ready adventure story from the pen

141

of Mr. Russell. His special forte is to pit one man against myriad
hostile forces, usually while that man is far from his home planet.
Armed mainly with his wits and a superior kind of ingenuity he
always out-thinks, out-talks, and out-maneuvers the enemy. Though
there might seem to be little variety in this pattern, it has proved
highly satisfactory both in Wasp in the past, and in this current
novel. There are certain resemblances between the two books, but
this doesn’t detract from the excitement. Credit belongs, perhaps,
not so much to the heroes, as to Mr. Russell’s own endless vitality.

THE LANGUAGES OF PAO. By Jack Vance. 2ZS pp. Avalon Books. $2.75.

This is quite a disappointing book in view of the excellence of
some of the underlying ideas. It involves the changes that can be
brought about in people by the manipulation of their language. This
is an important and interesting subject, and one that is worthy of
a much more probing and finely written novel than we have here.
Thanks are due Mr. Vance for opening up this line of thought, but
for very little else. The story line is right out of a second-rate movie
— the slaying of a ruler, the usurping of the throne by the regent
during the minority of the rightful heir, the bargain with a sinister
wizard to gain an ally, the wizard’s subsequent use of the rightful
heir as a pawn to gain his own ends.

In spite of this strike against it, the book might have been some-
what more successful had it delved more deeply into the purposes of
its main characters. As it is, the motives are over-simplified by ex-
plaining them in terms of power greed, or worse still, by not ex-
plaining them at all. Thus at the end of the book we aren’t left with
any clear idea of the next phase of Paonese development, though
that was presumably what the fuss was all about.

... OR SO YOU SAY

(Continued from page 140)

* Dear Editor:

In the December issue “The Big Count-Down” was excellent. If
the quality of these novels stays consistent. Amazing will definitely
rise in the prozine field.

Why not enlarge your book review column? I think it would be
worth the space.

Vic Ryan
2160 Sylvan Rd.

Springfield, 111.

142

AMAZING STORIES

AN ASIMOV SURPRISE!

(Continued from page 7)

no vices — or, at least, no serious vices. And, oh yes, I like to write.
My first attempt at writing came at 12 but the monstrosity that
resulted has been burned long ago. Science fiction did not come
until I had acquired my first typewriter four years ago, but it was
not until the middle of 1938 that I took my life in my hands and
bearded the mighty Editor in his den. The Providence that watches
over the rash beamed kindly down on me and “Marooned Off Vesta”
is the result.

There are more stories on the way, some in a stage of partial
completion now, and I hope and hope again that this first story does
not prove to be a flash in the pan. If it does, it won’t be because I
didn’t try. Anyway, I hope you like the story. After all, it is the
readers that are the powers behind the throne and they must be
pleased. Au revoir until we meet again ; and I sincerely hope we will.

Isaac Asimov

West Newton, Mass.

March, 1959

Dear Editor,

Well, let’s see now. My age, as stands documentarily proven in
this stuff you’re printing, has more than doubled. I am now rapidly
approaching the youthful age of 39 and I am no longer an aged
patriarch. My physical description is the same except that I- have
gained about 40 pounds of non-muscle, and look genial as well as
handsome.

My mother has not changed her mind about my looks, but neither
have other people. Still, I managed to get married 16% years ago
to a girl who’s hanging on grimly, despite the advice of her friends.
I have a little boy of 7% and a girl of nigh on to 4, neither of whom
quite understand that when I seem to be doing nothing, I am work-
ing very hard indeed and must have peace, quiet, and a lot of waiting
on hand and foot. (Their mother doesn’t get the idea, either.)

That wasn’t the last year at Columbia, as it turned out. What with
the war and graduate studies, they couldn’t get rid of me till 1949
and then only by bribing me with a Ph.D. The degree was in chem-
istry, as I changed my mind about medical school. Since I have been
teaching biochemistry in a medical school for 10 years, now, I have
had a chance to think over my decision in favor of chemistry by
observing medical students, and I’m glad, glad, glad. I am far too
delicate for the rigors of medical training.

I did manage to sell more pieces — a few hundred of them, what
with one thing and another (bribing editors, mostly). This morning

AN ASIMOV SURPRISE!

143

I received copies of my most recently published book, the second of
two non-fiction books on organic chemistry. This one is called The
World of Nitrogen (Abelard-Schuman, 1958, $2.75 and worth it —
free advt.) It’s my thirtieth book, though by the time this letter
appears I expect one more to be out.

Seriously, I will always be thankful for whatever it was that
moved me to begin to write science fiction, and to Amazing for the
first financial return. This business of writing has given me a happy
20 years, and if I may make another hope — I hope it all continues
for a long time.

Lsaac Asimov

A Jules Verne Memorial Medal was struck recently in France. This bronze
medal is heavy, and measures 2-3/4" in diameter, and is 3/8" thick. It
commemorates the life of Jules Verne and his work. The front is an excel-
lent likeness of Jules Verne; the obverse of the medal reads as follows:
Around the World in 80 Days — 5 Weeks in a Balloon Voyage From the Earth
to the Moon — 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

144

SHOPPiNG GUIPE

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Rate: 25< per word Including name and address. Minimum 10 words.
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New York City 16, N. Y. Attention M.artin I.incoln.

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rANTASY & SF Bookt & Aiogs lov/est prices, list
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BOOKS, Pocketbooks, magazines. Tremendous
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SALE: S-F collection 1953-present, $.40, 1947-
1952 $.70, before 1947 $1.00. Willlom Stewort,
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•'WINEMAKING. ” $1.00. •'Stout, Beer, Ale Brew-
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FLYING Saucers latest reports, articles. Subscribe
for "The Soucerlon.” 6 Issues $2.00. Saucers,
Dept. 1 , Box 2228, Clorksburg, W. Va.

“HYPNOTISM Explained” 64-page book 10^.
Bookmaster, 2432 Fernwood, Son Jose 15, Calif.

THE Low of life revealed and how to apply it.
$1.00. The Open Way, Celino, Tennessee.

CHEMICAL And Physicol Properties of the Ele-
ments. 40-pp. booklet. Alphabetical tabulation.
$1. Columbio Associotes, Box 591, Hudson, N. Y,

FOR SALE

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BUY Surplus Jeeps, tractors, winches, pumps, tools,
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FLYING Saucers chart. Comprehensive visualiza-
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PRINTING Presses, type, supplies, lists 44. Turn-
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100 PERSONALIZED Correspondence postcords.
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$50 TRANSISTOR Radio $23.95, Soldering gun
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AMERICAN Overseas lobs. High poy. Men, women.
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DETECTIVES — Experience unnecessary. Detective
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ANNOUNCING Home study course In commerciol
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OPPORTUNITIES! Government land available.
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MAKE $25-$50 week, clipping newspaper items
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145

$30-$d0 V/EEKLY oddr«ss!ng envelopes at home.
tnstrucKons $1 (refundoble). Reiss, 210 Fifth Ave.,
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WRITE For profit. No troining. Receive many small
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BINOCULARS & TELESCOPES

OPTICAL Bargains — request free giant catalog
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BINOCULAR Specialists, ail mokes repofred. Au-
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EDUCATIONAL

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FREE Booklet explains sensational courses. Amaz-
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PHOTOGRAPHY For pleosure or profit. Learn at
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USE Your mindl Unique method. Lesson 1 $1. De-
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ROCKETS & MISSILES

ROCKET plans and catalog of fuels, tubes, cones,
etc. 25^ (refundable). Central Rocket Company,
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STAMPSv^ COINS

100 LARGE U.S. commemoratives— only 25<J with
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1000 DIFFERENT Worldwide stamps $1.25. Valued
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U.S. STAMPS. Giant bargain catalog — 15^. Ray-
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UNITED Nations. Five different 10^. Approvals.
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77 DIFFERENT U.S*, 100 different Chino, 25 dlf-
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COIN Magazine. 200 pages. Sample 40^. Scrop-
book, 7323 Milwoukee, Chicogo 48.

NEW! 1959 bargain American coin catalogue ! Re-
vised prices! Only 25/. Write: Sullivan, 128-E&
East Fourth St., St. Paul 1; Minnesota.

PHOTOGRAPHY PRODUCTS

FREE! Blackhawk's big sole catalog 8mm., 16mm.
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146

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